MR. SPEAKER'S ABSENCE

The House being met, and the Speaker having leave of absence pursuant to paragraph (3) of Standing Order No. 3 (Deputy Speaker), Sir Michael Lord, the Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means, proceeded to the Table, and after prayers, took the Chair as Deputy Speaker.

Orders of the Day

Sunday Trading (Scotland) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

David Cairns: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	The Bill is simple with one substantive purpose: to extend to shop workers in Scotland the rights that those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland already enjoy. I thank those who have come to support the measure, especially colleagues from England, Wales and Northern Ireland who are here to try to give my constituents some basic rights that theirs already enjoy. Colleagues who have been involved in the campaign far longer than me will wish to speak, and I shall therefore try to keep my opening remarks as brief as possible, while outlining the Bill's key principles.
	It is against the law for employers to force shop workers to work on Sunday in England, Wales and Northern Ireland but not in Scotland, where no such legal protection exists. The Bill will give shop workers in Scotland the rights that they deserve. However, it is important to stress what the Bill does not do. It does not accord workers in Scotland preferential or additional rights. It does not extend rights to those who work on Sundays in other sectors. That would be beyond the scope of a private Member's Bill. It does not trespass on the Scottish Parliament's rights to determine the hours of Sunday trading in Scotland.
	The law in Scotland does not differ from that in the rest of the United Kingdom because of devolution. The House of Commons decided that employment law would continue to be determined here on a UK-wide basis. That makes the discrepancy in the law all the more anomalous and unacceptable.
	The reason for the discrepancy originates in the gradual, some might say tortuous, evolution of the laws on Sunday trading. It would take the entire time allotted for debate to do justice to the history of Sunday trading in this country, even if we started only from the days of Stanley Baldwin. I shall therefore not outline its history. Neither shall I try to make the case that Sunday is a special day that should be treated specially. The House has enshrined that assertion in law. The law also provides that shop workers occupy a distinct place in Sunday working. It is for those who dispute that to explain why the law is wrong. Those who oppose the measure must either oppose the law in the rest of the UK or explain why Sunday is special in England, Wales and Northern Ireland but not in Scotland.
	Although I said that I would not retell the epic account of Sunday trading, it is necessary to sketch a thumbprint account to locate this morning's debate. The Sunday Trading Act 1994 liberalised Sunday trading in England and Wales. It did not apply in Scotland because there was no statutory ban on Sunday trading north of the border. The controversial nature of the reform led the Government to allow the Commons a free vote on a series of options. Cabinet Ministers had the freedom to support or reject different options. It has been said that those who do not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.
	The debates on the 1994 Act were deeply felt and prolonged. I do not wish to encroach on the impartiality of the Chair, but you feature prominently in them, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Party allegiances did not matter. Some hon. Members wanted no liberalisation and some supported partial regulation, while others wanted complete deregulation.
	However, one thing united every speaker. Irrespective of their views on how liberal the law should be on Sunday trading, all speakers made it clear that any move to deregulate Sunday trading hours must be accompanied by new rights for Sunday shop workers. Not one speaker suggested that no additional protection was required to allow shop workers the choice not to work on Sunday. Although the Government granted a free vote on Sunday trading and the options on the extent of its deregulation, there was no choice about whether to give workers additional rights. The then Government whipped that vote, such was their determination to ensure that Sunday shop workers received additional rights.
	The then Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), on Second Reading of the Sunday Trading Bill in 1993, said:
	"There is a distinction between the issue of which shops can open on Sundays, which cuts across party lines, and employee rights. There will be a free vote on the choice between the options, but the Government have a clear employment policy and we shall defend that policy vigorously . . . The rights will apply whichever of the options for reform is chosen by Parliament.
	When the Act comes into force, existing shopworkers will have the right not to be dismissed or suffer detriment through refusing to work on Sunday, and can surrender those rights only by agreeing in writing to work on Sunday."—[Official Report, 29 November 1993; Vol. 233, c. 818–19.]
	Seldom have I agreed more with the right hon. and learned Gentleman.
	Indeed, so commendably and forcefully adamant were the Government on this point that I went on to read the response of the then Labour Opposition with some trepidation. They were, however, equally unwavering that safeguards for shop workers be built into the law. I am delighted to report to the House that I support every single word that the then Opposition spokesperson said in that debate. The fact that it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) is utterly irrelevant to my total support for his wise position. The shadow Home Secretary—as the Prime Minister then was—said:
	"we should fully protect the rights of those who work on Sundays in order that we may shop then. For me and for many of my colleagues, employee protection must go hand in hand with the freedom to shop. The two issues are not distinct". —[Official Report, 29 November 1993; Vol. 233, c. 822.]
	If employee protection must go hand in hand with the freedom to shop in England and Wales, it must also go hand in hand with the freedom to shop in Scotland.
	But just as the Sunday Trading Act did not apply in Scotland, neither did the additional rights. It could be argued that, as Sunday trading had never been illegal north of the border, there was no need for extra legal protection. Indeed, this was a commonly held view among many who spoke in the debates, but the argument was flawed on two counts. First, it overstated the level of Sunday trading that then took place in Scotland. Secondly, and crucially, it ignored the effect that liberalising the market in England would have in Scotland.
	Some particularly prescient hon. Members quickly realised the implications of such a move. It will come as no surprise to the House that the first to notice the danger was my right hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes), who raised the matter with the then Home Secretary on Second Reading, when he said:
	"If the House agrees to total deregulation, that will mean that we will get universal opening in Scotland, which we do not have at the moment, contrary to what was said earlier . . . There are multiples that do not open in Scotland because they do not open south of the border.
	Surely the protection in the Bill, . . . the right to refuse to work on Sundays, should apply also to Scotland. Will it be possible to amend the Bill in Committee to enable that section to apply to Scotland?"—[Official Report, 29 November 1993; Vol. 233, c. 821.]
	Sadly, the answer was no, but had we listened to my right hon. Friend then, we would not be debating this issue now. More importantly, had those rights been applied to Scotland, people who have since lost their jobs would not have done so.
	That brings me to what the excellent House of Commons Library briefing on my Bill refers to as the "Argos saga". I do not propose to dwell on this matter, for two reasons. First, others who were far more involved than I was are better placed to recount the episode. I am especially pleased to see in their places my hon. Friends the Members for Dumfries (Mr. Brown) and for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge), who, more than any others, have brought this issue to light and shone a torch on the need for reform.
	Far more importantly, I entirely refute the suggestion that this law is being introduced to punish a particular company. It is not. I believe that Argos has acted poorly, to say the least, but the case has served simply to highlight starkly the inadequacy of the current law. Now that this anomaly has been so publicly exposed, it would be wrong—a dereliction of duty on our part as lawmakers—to cross our fingers and hope that no one else loses their job for refusing to work on a Sunday. It is the lack of legal protection for shop workers in Scotland that motivates me, not a desire to punish one particular company.
	I turn now to the specific measures in the Bill. When we were drawing up the Bill, I told the parliamentary draftsman that all I wanted to do was amend the relevant section of the relevant Act, effectively adding the words "and Scotland" where applicable—nothing more and nothing less. That is essentially all that the Bill seeks to do. The protection first contained in the Sunday Trading Act is now found in the consolidated Employment Rights Act 1996, and it is that Act that I am seeking to amend.
	Clause 1 deletes the words "in England and Wales" where appropriate, and arranges for the current law to be extended to Scotland. Eagle-eyed Members will spot that subsection (3) highlights the difference between English and Scottish law over the legal term for alcohol. In England, it is referred to as "intoxicating liquor", whereas in Scotland it is referred to as "alcoholic liquor". Even the magnificent efforts of the House of Commons Library have been unable to establish the origins of this distinction. I am considering running a competition for the most ingenious suggestion. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland has already suggested that, although the drink may be alcoholic, Scots are never intoxicated. Answers on a postcard, please.

Desmond Swayne: It seems self-evident that this relates to the effect of alcohol. Clearly, the Scots are much more capable of holding their drink.

David Cairns: I think that that is the essence of what my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary was saying, but I am happy with the hon. Gentlemen's suggestion.
	The other clauses deal with commencement and an allowance for any provisional or transitional arrangements necessary. That is basically it. Should this Bill succeed, those who currently work in shops on Sunday will have the right to inform their superiors that they no longer wish to do so. This law has worked well in England and Wales for more than eight years. There is not a shred of evidence that it has affected profits or productivity. No one, to my knowledge, has even suggested that the law, as it applies in England and Wales, should be repealed. If businesses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland can make these provisions work, Scottish businesses will certainly not struggle to do so. Good companies have nothing to fear; they would not dream of forcing their employees to work on Sundays against their wishes.
	The Bill will have an impact on businesses, however, so I welcome the Government initiative to launch a wide-ranging consultation. The Scotland Office has more resources than I have, so I am happy to allow the consultation to be the major route through which opinion can be expressed, although I remain happy to respond to direct approaches from interested parties. The deadline for the consultation should be before the Bill is debated in Committee, and I will readily consider any amendment that may be necessary as a result of responses to the consultation.
	This is a straightforward and, I hope, uncontroversial measure. It extends legislation enacted by the previous Conservative Government, and enjoys support in all parts of the House. At heart, it addresses a basic unfairness. It is simply unjust that shop workers in Greenwich enjoy rights that shop workers in Greenock do not. The time has come to end this unfairness. I commend the Bill to the House.

Malcolm Bruce: I shall be brief, not least because there are other Bills before us. I congratulate the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) on a welcome Bill that commands widespread support among Liberal Democrats, and probably on both sides of the House.
	I was one of those who, in the debate on liberalising Sunday trading, voted for the most liberal outcome. I accept, however, that the universal view in the House at that time was that people's right not to work on Sundays should be protected. I also accept that many of us realised that an anomaly would arise in Scotland in due course.
	Some of the Argos employees affected were constituents of mine, and the matter was drawn to my attention. I am frankly astonished that Argos managed its affairs so badly: that was bad people management, regardless of the law.
	For all practical purposes—this argument applied at the time of the last debate, but I think that it is no longer relevant—there has been no difficulty in finding people who are willing to work on Sundays. Indeed, for a variety of reasons, some prefer to do so. The ability of any business to manage more liberal trading hours in ways that still respect the rights of its employees not to work on Sundays if they do not wish to is transparent. In those circumstances, it is surely right to introduce a Bill that will harmonise the laws.
	As the hon. Gentleman says, this is a reserved matter for the United Kingdom. It cannot be right for England and Scotland to have different rules for the protection of workers. The Bill is well timed and has been well presented. I hope that it has the full support of the House.

Frank Doran: I too congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow on his success in the ballot, and on his choice of subject. The Bill, as he said so eloquently, addresses a serious anomaly.
	I have an interest apart from my general interest in employment rights. Three of the 11 Argos workers who were threatened with dismissal for refusing to accept the company's terms were my constituents. I contacted Argos when the issue arose, and was shocked at the response that I received from Mr. Terry Duddy, its chief executive. I was shocked for two reasons. There was a suggestion that consultation had taken place, although all the information received from my constituents and from the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers indicated that there had been virtually no consultation. There had been discussions, but they were take-it-or-leave-it discussions.
	I was also shocked by what Mr. Duddy's letter said about the rights of staff. He wrote:
	"All staff with religious or extremely difficult family situations have been supported and excluded where necessary."
	An arbitrary rule was being applied. My hon. Friend contrasted that with the situation in England and Wales, where workers have the right to choose whether to work on Sundays. As the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) pointed out, many workers choose to work on Sundays, but at least they have the right to choose. Managers do not apply tests arbitrarily to their work force.
	I met USDAW representatives with local officials and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge), who, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Brown), has pursued the campaign. They too should be congratulated on the way in which they have conducted it. I see the Bill as a noble outcome to that campaign. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland took up the cudgels, but my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow has dealt with the details very appropriately.

Jim Sheridan: May I point out for the sake of clarity that our hon. Friend's constituency is Greenock and Inverclyde?

Frank Doran: When I arrived here in 1987, it was Greenock and Port Glasgow, but I thank my hon. Friend for correcting me.
	I will not go into the details already dealt with by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns), but, as I said, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State took up the cudgels. She gave the Argos chief executive what could be described as a good talking to, as only she can. That produced a very positive result: Argos withdrew. As my hon. Friend said, however, this is not about one company but about fundamental rights for workers.
	I want to make two straightforward points. My hon. Friend made the pertinent point that at the time of what became the Sunday Trading Act 1994 there was a consensus in the House about those fundamental rights, but during the pre-legislative consultation they were not included in the Bill. A strong campaign was required, partly by the Opposition but mainly by the shop workers' union. It was led by the union's then assistant general secretary, Sir Bill Connor, now general secretary.
	Two things are notable. First, the then Conservative Government recognised the importance of the issue and accepted representations on it. Secondly, the Bill could not possibly have been passed in its original form, because just as many Conservative Members as Opposition Members were concerned about employees being forced to work on Sundays.
	My second point is that there is a fundamental reason for the reserving of employment rights to Westminster. They are reserved because they are seen as fundamental. The Government's current employment policies could be summarised as an attempt to create a flexible labour market with minimum standards. Those standards, too, are fundamental: that is why we introduced the Employment Rights Act 1999, the minimum wage legislation, the working time regulations and the parental leave provisions. All those were introduced to provide a floor for employment rights.
	The Argos case has highlighted the difficulty caused by the difference between the arrangements in Scotland and those in the rest of Great Britain. That difference is unacceptable, because it breaches that principle of a floor of minimum standards, and because it removes the level playing field that should exist in employment rights. We cannot afford to allow different terms and conditions of employment in different areas. As those of us with trade union connections know very well, if managements want to save costs, the first thing they look at is terms and conditions. We cannot allow that to happen on a cross-border basis.

Angus Robertson: I agree wholeheartedly with what the hon. Gentleman has said so far and I support the Bill, but given that we now have a European single market, does it not make sense to extend minimum rights throughout not just the United Kingdom but the European Union?

Frank Doran: I do not think that Sunday trading is a problem on the continent. It is certainly not a problem in the way that it has been here, but of course there are certain basic rights that should apply throughout the European Union. A number have already been implemented: one of the Government's first acts was to sign up to the social chapter, since when we have progressively implemented other rights. Mine is a simple point. These are basic rights, and we cannot afford to allow regional variations.
	The consensus reached in 1994, which gave important employment protection to shop workers by statute in England and Wales and by agreement in Scotland, was broken by Argos. It is no accident that Argos took that action. It was necessary only to read the financial pages to see that its trading performance was causing concern. The management looked for cost savings, and looked first where—as I said earlier—most managers look: the terms and working conditions of their employees.
	If it had not been Argos that broke the consensus, however, another company would have. The lesson to learn is that there are certain fundamental rights that workers should have by law. One is the right for each individual to decide whether or not to work on Sundays. The last Conservative Government gave that right to workers in England and Wales; my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde—with, I am sure, support from this Labour Government—will give it to workers in Scotland.

Andrew Selous: It is a pleasure and a privilege to be able to speak in this important debate. I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) on introducing this Bill. I can assure him of my support, and that I will enter the Lobby with him to ensure that this Bill is passed today.
	Probably the great majority of us in this House would agree that for the sake of the institution of marriage, and of couples, families and children, it should be a priority that such people have one shared day a week when they can be together to do as they please—be it going to church or whatever else they may choose to do. That is especially important in the United Kingdom, which has the highest divorce rate in the European Union, and by far the largest number of dependent children in single-parent households. I mention that because, given that 34 per cent. of lone parents with dependent children usually or sometimes work on a Sunday, many children are left with no parent at all on that day. In fact, the situation is even worse, because many of those parents have to work on Saturdays as well, so thousands of children effectively have parentless weekends. Moreover, given that some of those children may be of school age, very large numbers are in effect not seeing a parent at any time at all during the day. As someone who will continue to argue that family breakdown and its various causes is perhaps one of the most significant problems facing the UK today, I consider this an issue of great concern that needs to be brought to hon. Members' attention.
	We have heard that this debate is about giving people choice as to whether they work on Sunday—the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) has mentioned this point—and I agree that they should have that choice. However, he should be aware that according to the evidence in a publication produced jointly last year by the National Centre for Social Research and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, some 70 per cent. of lone parents who work at weekends would prefer not to. That is significant, because it shows that there is little in the way of choice. Indeed, I shall argue that, good as this Bill is, we need to go further. The rights provided to shop and betting office workers are not strong enough; nor do I see a reason why this measure should be confined to just those workers.
	Although I welcome the Bill, I would argue that the protection given to shop and betting office workers in England and Wales is in fact more imagined than real. The powers that exist in England and Wales are not working particularly well. Since the introduction of the Sunday Trading Act 1994, there has been only one such case in which a worker has won a claim for unfair dismissal against his employer. Mr. Paul Charnetski had worked for Safeway for some time before 1994, so he was in fact a protected worker, albeit with the statutory opt-out right, which is not particularly relevant in this regard. He did not want to work on Sundays, and Safeway dismissed him in 1999 for refusing to do so. Only in August 2002 did he finally win his industrial tribunal case against Safeway, and I shall quote briefly from his barrister's comments at that time. She said that the evidence given by Safeway suggested that it has
	"ridden roughshod over the statutory rights of hundreds if not thousands of their low-paid staff."
	The reality is that most shops have brought in five-out-of-seven-day working contracts. In effect, if they want to work in the retail sector, most shop workers have to sign a contract that, in requiring them to work five days out of seven, does not provide that either of the two days off be a Sunday. So their days off could include a Monday, a Tuesday, a Wednesday, a Thursday or a Saturday, but they do not have to include a Sunday. That is the reality for most retail workers in this country.
	It is also true that, for those who want to get such a job in the first place, if they show any hesitation during the interview about working on a Sunday, they will probably not get it. Employers no doubt cite other reasons, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that, if people show such hesitation, they are less likely to get the job. If they suggest, once in a job, that they would prefer not to work on Sundays, a lot of pressure could be brought to bear, and their chances of promotion could be severely reduced as a result. There is pressure and coercion, and a lot of employees do not necessarily have another job to go to; indeed, a shop worker will probably find exactly the same set of circumstances in the next supermarket or shop with which they try to get a job.
	As I have said, why are we considering legislation just in respect of shop and betting office workers? Existing legislation has not worked particularly well, as the evidence shows. Only one case has been brought to an industrial tribunal in the past eight years. Some 9 million of our fellow citizens work on Sundays, and I do not believe that all of them are happy in doing so. Nor is it not just shop and betting office workers who are affected. Do we realise that the delivery people—the drivers of vans and big lorries who bring the goods to shops—are not covered by this legislation?

Malcolm Savidge: I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman might clarify his argument. As I understand it, according to current legislation shop workers should have the absolute right to refuse to work on a Sunday without fear of dismissal, redundancy or any kind of detriment. The legislation also states that they should have the right to opt out of Sunday working, and should be able to do so again within three months with exactly the same safeguards. Does that principle not operate?

Andrew Selous: The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. Section 42 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 does indeed give them that right, and the provisions of the Sunday Trading Act 1994 are incorporated in it. However, although that statutory right is given, the reality is that the onus is entirely on the employee to complain, and to be the brave person who stands up to the employer. The management, and perhaps those of their colleagues who are happy to work on Sundays, apply great pressure on them not to sign up to that right. The fact that only one such case in eight years has successfully been taken to industrial tribunal supports my argument. Some 9 million of our fellow citizens work on Sundays. As I have said, a study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the National Centre for Social Research shows that 70 per cent. of lone parents would rather not work at weekends—

Several hon. Members: rose—

Andrew Selous: I will take interventions in moment, but I just want to finish this point. I want the requirement to be placed not on the employee but on the employer. It is not employees who should have to fight for their rights, be brave, battle on their own and perhaps not win a tribunal.

Russell Brown: I appreciate the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, but he has to understand that for many people, a job is job. It is important, and it keeps life going for them, and sometimes people are very reluctant to speak out. I hope to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so that I can make a small contribution, and in doing so I hope to give the hon. Gentleman some idea of certain practices that make people afraid of taking on their employer.

Andrew Selous: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's support. He seems to be reinforcing the arguments that I have just made, so I thank him very much and look forward to his contribution on this very point.
	As I have said, why are we concerned only about the rights of shop and betting office workers? If we as a nation believe—as most of our constituents do—that a shared day off a week is important, why is this principle important only for people who work in betting shops and retail outlets?

Shona McIsaac: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we are debating this Bill today because of an anomaly in the way the law works? Other workers do have certain protections under the law, but shop and betting office workers do not. That is why we are addressing this particular issue.

Andrew Selous: As I said, I am delighted to support the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde. His Bill is clear and simple; it represents an advance and it has Government support. However, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman's interest in the subject and his rationale for proposing the measure is not limited to one group of his constituents. He has, rightly, introduced the Bill to address a specific anomaly, but I am sure that his concern—like mine—is for all his constituents. The hon. Lady said that other workers have rights in such cases; her intervention came just as I was about to argue that they did not.

John Robertson: I am extremely interested in the hon. Gentleman's contribution; he makes some excellent points. May I suggest that he become a member of the Standing Committee so that he can also make them at that stage?

Andrew Selous: I shall certainly express an interest in serving on the Committee and I hope that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench have taken note of the hon. Gentleman's intervention.
	I realise that many hon. Members want to speak, so I shall not detain the House longer than necessary, but I want to draw its attention to the case of Mr. Stephen Copsey, which came to light only last month. Mr. Copsey was a team manager at a quarry, where he had worked for 14 years. He had worked for the company ever since he left school, had an exemplary work record and, until recently, was a highly valued employee. However, in April 2002, the company introduced full seven-day working and refused to make any exception for Mr. Copsey. He was given the choice of either working on Sundays or losing his job—which is exactly what happened. He tried to negotiate, but his employer refused to consider either alternative employment or the introduction of a flexible shift system. On 31 July 2002, Mr. Copsey was dismissed without even the minimum statutory redundancy pay, although I realise that that is a separate matter.
	Mr. Copsey said:
	"It was difficult to describe the pressure and hostility that I was shown."
	Shop workers, too, are subject to that pressure and hostility, which is why only one case on such matters has been taken to an industrial tribunal in eight years. Most shop workers are probably not brave enough to go through with the process.
	Mr. Copsey continued:
	"I have been treated despicably after 14 years of service."
	The matter has gone to an industrial tribunal and the evidence is currently under consideration. I understand that Mr. Copsey's barrister will use the Human Rights Act 1998 to argue that Mr. Copsey, who is a churchgoer, should have the same rights as Muslims, Hindus and Jews, who enjoy some protection under the Race Relations Act 1976. The barrister will argue that section 2 of the Human Rights Act is relevant in the case and that may ensure that there is some progress.

Bill Tynan: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the circumstances of that individual could have been resolved if he was a trade union member? Trade union protection is extremely important when people are pressurised to work in conditions that they consider unacceptable. As a trade union member he would have been represented in the workplace and at the tribunal, and would have been better able to defend his right not to work on Sundays.

Andrew Selous: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before the hon. Gentleman replies to that intervention, may I remind him that the Bill relates to shop workers and betting workers, not to quarry workers?

Andrew Selous: I am grateful to you for that reminder, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I mentioned the case only to show that betting and shop workers are not properly protected either. I shall conclude my remarks shortly.
	To respond to the point made by the hon. Member for Hamilton, South (Mr. Tynan), I certainly support responsible trade unionism. Mr. Copsey may be a member of a trade union and, in that case, I am sure that he would be well represented. In fact, he has extremely good representation, and it will be interesting to know the outcome of the case.

Desmond Swayne: I agree entirely with the sentiments that my hon. Friend has expressed. He cited the Rowntree evidence that most single parents who have to work on Sundays would prefer not to do so. My concern is about people who can work only on Sundays, even though they might prefer to work on other days. What evidence is there to suggest that jobs would be available to people who were able to work only at weekends?

Andrew Selous: I am not sure exactly what examples my hon. Friend refers to. My thesis is that people should have free choice in the matter. I have no problem with people choosing to work on Sundays. We should remember that we all rely on people who have to work on Sundays, such as those who run nuclear power stations or work in the emergency and accident departments of our major hospitals. Many people have to work on Sundays so that society can function, and I am simply arguing for free choice in the matter. The reality for shop and betting workers is that they do not have that free choice.

Tom Harris: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the fact that only one case on this issue has been brought before an industrial tribunal over the past eight years is a testament to the existing legal protection for workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland? If that level of protection is not extended to Scotland, does he agree that it will be even more difficult for Scottish workers to take their cases to an industrial tribunal?

Andrew Selous: As I said earlier, I am delighted to support the measure, and the protections—such as they are—that affect England and Wales should certainly be extended to Scotland.
	I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman, however; if he were to make contact with the Keep Sunday Special campaign, it would provide him with a mass of evidence to show that many, many shop and retail workers feel that they have been pressurised—indeed, coerced is not too strong a word—to agree to contracts whereby they have to work five days in seven and neither of their days off is a Sunday.
	In the perfect labour market of classical economics, employees would have a vast range of job offers. Indeed, when the economy is strong, people may have more choice; but the reality for many people is that there is no choice. As the whole supermarket culture rests on the same attitudes to staff and all supermarkets operate similar contracts, there is in fact no choice. On that point, I conclude my remarks.

Russell Brown: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) on introducing the Bill. Many of us would have chosen to promote protection for shop workers and betting workers in Scotland, if we had been chosen in the ballot.
	I was intrigued by my hon. Friend's definition of the difference between intoxicating liquor and alcoholic liquor. I am sure that he and colleagues from other Scottish constituencies would agree that the vast majority of people in Scotland tend just to call it a bevvy. As a nation we have always been keen to keep things simple.
	The Bill has only four clauses but its passage through Parliament will make a tremendous difference to people. My only regret is that we are unable to legislate retrospectively. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, people had been losing their jobs for many years before the recent fiasco that brought the matter to our attention. Despite the reports in the national press, I am not convinced that all those who walked away from an employer who was happy to exploit, not a loophole, but a major gap in the law, which disadvantaged shop workers in Scotland, have been able to return to their jobs.
	My hon. Friend has given the history of Sunday trading and what it has meant. Sunday is a special day. Many families chose to spend time together on Sundays. It is traditionally seen as a day of rest by many people. After all, it is the Christian Sabbath and a traditional day of worship. If my wife were here today, she would say that it is a day when she would desire to drag me around stores and especially garden centres. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy) says from a sedentary position that I love it, but it is probably one of my pet hates—I put it no stronger than that.

Desmond Swayne: Will the hon. Gentleman accept from another father that he is letting the side down? [Laughter.]

Russell Brown: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but may I say— not only as a father, but as a grandfather—that I like to spend time with my grandchildren, which is the real excuse that I use to avoid garden centres?
	As has been said, this issue came to light when the major store, Argos, attempted to enforce changes in its 37 stores across Scotland, and the store in Dumfries was no exception. I have said previously in an Adjournment debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge) that that was a penny-pinching exercise, as has been hinted at again this morning, and I shall return to that, but I shall explain what happened.
	People were quite happy to work on Sundays. The store in Dumfries had never been short of staff who were quite prepared to give of their time to work to keep that store open and to satisfy every shopper in and around Dumfries who wanted to shop in the store. That was never the issue. In fact, one of my constituents was distraught about what was happening because she was the sole breadwinner in the household, and she saw Sunday as a normal working day. She was quite happy to give up other time because an additional payment was involved, which made the difference between, I suspect, surviving and having a good quality of life. Sunday was important to her. Suddenly, because of that major change, she would have to work some Sundays, but there would be no additional payment for doing so.
	In fact, things became worse because my constituent's working day was five hours. The store was open 12 o'clock to 4, and people ended up in the ridiculous situation where they were asked to come in for an hour before the store opened to do some kind of work to make up their five hours. They got a day off in the week, but there was no additional payment. That was the downside for those who were prepared to work. Of course other members of staff were quite happy to let their colleagues do their work, and their weekend—Saturday and Sunday—was precious to them, especially the Sunday because they spent that time with their partners.
	Only this morning, before I came to the Chamber, I contacted the store and spoke to a colleague who said, "Let's hope that the politicians can do something for us here in Scotland and give shop workers some protection." The House should take on board that important message.
	There is another element to the issue. A few days ago, one of my colleagues called together a group of Members of Parliament to consider establishing an all-party group on dignity at work, and the very issue considered then was bullying and harassment. It would be fair to say that many people have witnessed some bullying and harassment. People are told, "You will work. You have no option."
	My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has made excellent efforts in her discussions with Terry Duddy, the chief executive of Argos. After a real face-to-face discussion with that gentleman, my right hon. Friend was convinced that he was about to change his mind and offer some sort of concession to his employees. Many of us went away from Westminster after that meeting thinking that we had a solution to the problem and that the company had backed off.
	About a week later, I discovered that the staff of the shop in my constituency had been visited by one of the regional managers, who walked in and said, "Whatever has happened in the last two or three days makes no difference to you." He said that, if they had a good reason to show that Sunday was special to them on religious grounds, fine, the company would consider it, but, beyond that, there was no real difference. I applaud the valiant efforts made by the Secretary of State for Scotland in trying to change that company's view.
	I want to mention the consultation document, which was also alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde. It is interesting that there is a consultation process, and people are taking part. Of course, as well as congratulating my hon. Friend on what he has done today, and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers must also be congratulated on everything that it has done.
	Many hon. Members have been wary of the so-called voluntary arrangement that has allowed shop workers to opt out of Sunday working in Scotland. We have always felt that the arrangement offered no protection to shop and betting workers and that it would last only as long as employers were prepared to put up with it. We saw that crunch towards the back end of last year with Argos.
	I firmly believe that Scottish shop and betting workers should have the same protection as their counterparts in the rest of the United Kingdom. That is only fair. The proposals in the consultation document published by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would provide exactly the same rights, with the exception of the protected shop worker.
	When the Sunday Trading Act 1994 was implemented on 26 August 1994, all shop workers, except Sunday-only workers, whose contracts had already started were automatically protected from any requirement to work on Sundays, whereas shop workers who started after the implementation date had to go through the opting-out procedure to become a protected shop worker. The same is true of betting shop workers, but their implementation date was 3 January 1995. That date was chosen because of the lack of operation in Scotland on the first and second day of January in any year. Protected shop and betting workers who wanted to work on Sundays had to opt in by giving written notice to their employers.
	USDAW accepts that the system of automatically protecting shop and betting shop workers is not appropriate to the current situation in Scotland. Before it was introduced in the rest of the United Kingdom, Sunday trading had been illegal, so it was right to give shop workers a clear choice when they attained the new right to work on Sundays. That is not the case in Scotland, where Sunday trading has been legal and widespread for many years.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, Central (Mr. Doran) has commented on regional variations, and I want to say how important it is to have one structure throughout the United Kingdom. He and I sat together during the consideration in Committee of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, and we saw attempts to consider regional variations. I made the point that, coming from the part of Scotland with the lowest pay, I did not want there to be regional variations that might condemn workers in my constituency to being less well paid than elsewhere. That is why I am very much in favour of a firmer and more secure provision, which offers real protection for people. What I witnessed towards the end of last year was the opening of a new out-of-town retail centre. It was a pleasure to see that coming, and it offered new employment opportunities. What I discovered, however, was that some of the new employers coming to the area had approached Argos to discuss how it had set about operating its working arrangements in relation to five out of seven days working. That gives out a clear message: Argos, as a company, started something.

Malcolm Bruce: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Does he also consider that the activities of these multiples have a knock-on effect on smaller shops, which are effectively forced to put the same pressure on their workers to survive in a highly competitive environment? That is why we must have legislation that will curb the more aggressive retailers and protect workers in smaller or independent outlets who would otherwise come under the same pressure.

Russell Brown: I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman's excellent point. For my part, I have looked around and learned a lot in the short period I have been here. In particular, I have looked at the retail sector and supermarkets and some of the things that happen in everyday life as a result of pressure from what we call the big boys. Pressure is imposed by reputable companies, or companies that are seen as reputable, which has a knock-on effect. That hits home in the more rural areas. At one time, some of the new stores that were about to open were struggling, and it may be a cause for congratulation of this Government that unemployment in my constituency has fallen significantly. With unemployment being so low in my area, it is difficult to find people to take up the job opportunities that come along. That may be good in one respect, but it creates difficulties in another. It is extremely worrying, however, if employers can see a chink of light that allows them to exploit an opportunity. That is why this is seen as a loophole, although I see it as a major gap. Something must be done to make sure that the working environment and life for people who give of their time to serve the public in shops and stores are made much better.
	In conclusion, I once again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde—the constituency used to be Greenock and Port Glasgow. If we think that we have difficulty in determining who represents which constituency, that is nothing compared with what we will see once the Boundary Commission for Scotland finishes its exercise. Obviously, there will be fewer of us, and, as I have said for a long time, not many members of the public will shed tears at the thought of 13 MPs suddenly disappearing. Perhaps that is an argument—and a battle—for another day. I also congratulate other parliamentary colleagues, on both sides of the House, on coming here this morning. It is important that we offer the same protection to shop workers—and betting shop workers—in Scotland as we have done to others who work in that sector elsewhere in the UK.

Desmond Swayne: I congratulate the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) on both his good fortune in achieving such a favourable placing for his Bill and his good sense in introducing such a splendid measure. However, I dispute the history that is given as the official version in the documents supporting the Bill.
	The Christmas and Sunday trading factsheet issued by the Department of Trade and Industry consumer and competition policy directorate states:
	"Sunday trading has been legal in Scotland for many years and, in consequence, many Scottish shop workers had become accustomed to Sunday working. It was the Government's view that the reform of the law on Sunday trading in England and Wales was not necessary in Scotland. These arrangements seemed to work to the satisfaction of all, without the need for further legislation."
	Even the explanatory notes—which do not form part of the Bill, and for which the Department, not the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde, is responsible—state:
	"No modern Scottish statutory provisions specifically relating to Sunday working exist. Sunday opening had been so long permitted in Scotland, that a view seems to have been taken that workers in Scotland had no reasonable expectation of avoiding working on Sundays."
	That is absolute nonsense. I well recall my childhood in Scotland, but I do not remember any shops—other than the small corner shop—being open.

Malcolm Bruce: Will not the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the real version of the history is that Sunday trading laws did not exist in Scotland because the power of the Church was sufficient for people to withhold Sunday trading voluntarily?

Desmond Swayne: The hon. Gentleman is quite right, and I shall come to that later. I can recall a time, however, when one could not get a drink in Scotland on a Sunday unless one was a bona fide traveller and one went to a hotel. I hasten to add, however, that at that time I could not legally purchase a drink. Nevertheless, that was the case.
	As the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) has pointed out, such were the cultural and religious certainties that Sunday trading did not take place, so there was no need for the law to protect Scottish workers.

Eric Forth: I am glad that my hon. Friend has touched on what he describes characteristically as cultural and religious certainties. One of the things that has always intrigued me about these debates, which occur from time to time, is the comparison with the United States. As he knows, religious observance is much more prevalent there than in this country, as is church attendance, yet the American people manage to combine a belief in God, church attendance and a relaxed Sunday, on which many of them shop—and work and shop—perfectly satisfactorily.

Desmond Swayne: They are fortunate indeed.

Eric Forth: Sensible.

Desmond Swayne: I, too, credit them with good sense. The reality is, however—I suspect that this is based on my prejudices rather than my knowledge—that religious leadership in the United States is somewhat more robust than it has been in the United Kingdom. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that it is infinitely preferable that workers' rights should be protected by cultural values and certainties than that we should have to have recourse to the law to make up for deficiencies in that regard.

Tom Harris: Does not the hon. Gentleman accept that a more or less informal agreement among shop owners in Scotland has only recently broken down? It is only because of the betrayal of Argos that this new legislation has had to be introduced. Previously, a voluntary agreement existed.

Desmond Swayne: I entirely accept that the hon. Gentleman is right. I will deal with that point shortly.
	As briefing material for this debate, I sought a statement from the Lord's Day Observance Society. It provided me with a very lengthy statement, from which I will extract just one or two lines:
	"Sadly we have witnessed in our nation over the past 50 years a steady decline in the application of this 'one day in seven' principle, which was intended for our good—the Sabbath, was made for man. The result of neglecting this gift is all too obvious in society. We are now reaping what we have sown. Sunday has become like any other day and, increasingly, people find that they are expected to work on Sunday—sometimes, against their will."
	The society goes on to catalogue a long list of what it regards as direct consequences of Sunday working. I would go as far as to say that Sunday working may have been a contributory factor in many of those social phenomena, but I do not think that the finger can be pointed to it as the main cause. It is probably a phenomenon in itself rather than the root cause of many of society's evils.
	I would like hon. Members to keep in mind the telling phrase in the Lord's Day Observance Society statement about our
	"reaping what we have sown".
	I shall shortly come to the issue of Argos in that regard.

Eric Forth: I am intrigued to know whether my hon. Friend thinks that the long-term decline in church attendance in this country is a long-term secular trend that one can trace far back. Does he detect any acceleration in the decrease in church attendance since the Sunday trading provisions were changed in England or Scotland?

Desmond Swayne: There has been a very long-term decline. My right hon. Friend may wish to go back to the days when there were recusancy fines in England to ensure that people attended church, but I suspect that he does not. In church last Sunday, my vicar, who had recently attended a conference on the issue, gave us depressing statistics about the precipitous recent decline in church attendance. I cannot remember the figures—they were stark—but he suggested a parallel with the increase in Sunday trading. The reality is that there are many more things that we can do on Sunday. Even a churchgoer like me often thinks of many things that I would rather be doing when I listen to a sermon. Other opportunities exist.
	In a society that is so fractured, I draw attention to one factor that did not exist to anywhere near such an extent 20 years ago. Sunday has come to be regarded as father's day for all those fathers who do not otherwise have access to their children during the week because of the breakdown of marriage. It is unlikely that they will spend that precious day in church with their children when they could go to an open shopping centre and enjoy all the facilities there. That is a powerful factor in the figures.

Anne Picking: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Sunday is special to our constituents for all sorts of reasons? Above all, the Bill should be about employment rights and against discrimination.

Desmond Swayne: I entirely agree with the hon. Lady. She is absolutely correct and faultless in her analysis.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) pointed out, the provisions of the Sunday Trading Act 1994 and the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 are now subsumed into the Employment Rights Act 1996. However, the provisions for shop workers and betting shop workers in the 1996 Act do not extend to Scotland. Therefore, the Scots can call on the general provisions against unfair dismissal as their only statutory right, with all the impediments involved thereto. For example, one has to be in work for at least a year before one can call on the provisions against unfair dismissal. The burden of proof with regard to Sunday working is on the employee to show that he has been treated unreasonably.
	As the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Harris) pointed out, protection in Scotland has relied exclusively on the existence of a voluntary agreement. I am in favour of voluntary agreements. After all, the voluntary principle protected Scottish workers for many years when there was no need whatever for the law to step in. It is sad when the law has to step in to shore up what society has failed to achieve by voluntary means.
	The Scotland Office's consultation document of December 2002 on how the voluntary agreement was working said:
	"Generally speaking, the voluntary arrangement in respect of shop and betting workers in Scotland has operated well but could be open to manipulation. The Government has had increasing concerns about the capacity of the non-statutory approach to guarantee equality of treatment as between relevant shop workers in Scotland compared to the rest of the country . . . companies in Scotland are basically in the position of being able to require Sunday working and by the same token, workers have no automatic rights to opt out of Sunday working for religious, family or any other reasons, bringing the risk of discrimination against shop workers."
	The document concludes:
	"There is a clear risk therefore the Scottish workers could be discriminated against in a way that would not be legally possible in the rest of the country."
	That is absolutely right, because those workers were discriminated against.
	As the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde said, the Bill is not the anti-Argos measure. However, there is general agreement that what happened at Argos focused the debate and crystallised this issue. It is an important issue, so I return to what I said earlier about our
	"reaping what we have sown".
	When the Argos issue blew up, the bishop and leader of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Most Reverend Bruce Cameron, wrote to Argos. He said:
	"Neither I nor the church I represent would want to preserve Sunday for religious purposes alone."
	Oh no, certainly not for religious reasons. He is saying, "I might be a bishop, but I certainly would not want to preserve Sunday for religious reasons." How is that for falling at the first fence or selling a pass? It gets worse. The letter adds:
	"Many of use welcome the wider opportunities offered to people to spend their weekends in leisure and shopping."
	The hon. Member for Gordon blamed it all on the multiples—the big boys. Did it occur to the bishop why Argos had taken this action? As the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde made clear, those multiples that trade in England and Scotland began to trade in Scotland as a consequence of the huge increase in activity in England. However, they did not open in Scotland just to spite Scottish workers. They did it in response to the demands of ordinary Scottish people to trade, buy and sell on Sunday.

Tom Harris: My memory may be failing me, but it is my experience that shop trading in Scotland was a normal part of life for many years, and long before legislation was introduced in England to allow the multiples to trade in England and Wales. Sunday trading was going on in Scotland long before it was introduced in England.

Desmond Swayne: With respect to the hon. Gentleman, he pointed out that the issue was crystallised by Argos and by the big multiple chains opening in shopping centres on Sunday. There was no problem when small shops opened in small towns so that people could get their messages done on Sunday. The problem for workers rather than for the proprietors of small shops results from changes in the way we live. We do our shopping and leisure activities on a Sunday. I am entirely at ease with people's desire to do that, but I resent the fact that the bishop has suggested, "I'm in favour of protecting workers and aren't these multiples awful and wicked?" when in the same breath he says that he supports, wants and enjoys the greater freedoms that result from the liberalisation of the Sunday trading laws. The one leads as a direct consequence to the other.

Eric Forth: Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a theological and doctrinal element to the argument that we ignore at our peril? There is a contradiction between the classic, rather narrow, Scottish Calvinist attitude towards the Sabbath, especially in the far west and far north of Scotland where a rigid approach is taken, and the more modern approach that allows people to combine a proper amount of worship, observance and church attendance with other social and family activities. Does he agree that in some people's minds that is an unresolved dilemma?

Desmond Swayne: That is right, and as my right hon. Friend introduces doctrinal matters to the debate, I say to him:
	"Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest . . . whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death."
	They did not take prisoners in Exodus, and of course I eschew that attitude. There is a balance to be had between enjoying a leisurely Sunday and enjoying the benefits of Sunday as a special and different day. There are, of course, liberalisations implicit in such an approach, and hon. Members cannot escape the reality that has caused the Bill to be introduced.
	If we expect large multiple stores to open on Sunday, someone has to staff them. Someone has to sell the goods and work. It is right that the Bill should bring legal protection to those people. I am 100 per cent. in favour of it. However, I share the concern expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire that, once we introduce a measure of protection, the motivation behind the Bill in Scotland will turn out to be the tip of an iceberg and huge employment pressures will be brought to bear on people to work on Sunday in spite of their statutory rights.
	I end with the Commandment itself:
	"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates".
	That is the important point. We cannot expect not to work and to have the day off if we are not prepared to allow that right to thy maidservant and thy manservant. Everything that we expect to be available to us and open to us on Sunday has a consequence for the maidservants and the manservants who have to staff the shops when they, quite properly, would rather be doing something else.

Calum MacDonald: I welcome the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns). His presentation of it and the tone that he set will, I hope, result in unanimous support for the proposed change in the law. I also congratulate those organisations that have brought the issue to prominence in the past few months, and in particular the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers on representing its members, and the Lord's Day Observance Society on the way in which it has made its case. I remember a meeting convened in one of the Committee Rooms on behalf of a joint delegation from USDAW and the Lord's Day Observance Society following a campaign that culminated in a ten-minute Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge) that highlighted the issue, and I congratulate him on that.
	We organised the meeting and a number of colleagues attended. It was highly successful and showed that there was wide support for a change in the law, not just on religious grounds, although they were hugely important for people who held such strong beliefs, but on the grounds of equal rights north and south of the border and of the quality of life for employees and workers, and in particular the protection of family life, which is a theme that has run through the debate. It is possible that we think that the position of shop workers is special because a disproportionate number of women work in shops and they play an important role in family life. That is why securing protection for shop workers is so profoundly important.
	I commend the Scotland Office on the way in which it has taken up the issue. Following the lobbying meeting attended by the LDOS and USDAW, it seized on the issue and met Argos management. I congratulate it on the energy and weight that it has put behind the argument for securing the rights of shop workers. My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Brown) said that, sadly, there has been some backsliding, not perhaps by Argos as a whole, but in certain stores, which reinforces the argument that the conventions can no longer be relied on and we need to change the law.
	I also commend the Scotland Office for its support of the process by undertaking its own consultation. Many of my constituents have responded and have copied their representations to me. I encourage members of the public from every constituency in Scotland to take advantage of the consultation to make their views known.

Jim Sheridan: Does my hon. Friend agree that if there were no Scotland Office, which is what some hon. Members want, such a Bill would not have the same high profile, priority and effort afforded to it?

Calum MacDonald: My hon. Friend is right. It is a tribute to the influence of the Scotland Office and the Secretary of State that their intervention brought about the change in attitude by senior Argos management.
	The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) mentioned the attitudes of the far north and west of Scotland. Those hon. Members who have visited my constituency over the years will have noticed that in large parts of it on Sundays there are very few shops open and very few trading opportunities. The picture painted by the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) of the Scotland of his childhood prevails in large parts of the Western Isles. Even in the Outer Hebrides conditions are changing: in the past year Sunday flights have been introduced, and that will undoubtedly bring other changes in its wake. It may well be that as the years pass shops will begin to open on Sundays even in the Outer Hebrides. I do not imagine that Sunday opening will ever reach the level that it has in mainland Scotland, but the Bill will provide protection for that eventuality.
	I acknowledge the point made by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) in his excellent contribution, that the proposed change will not be foolproof, just as the system in England and Wales is not foolproof. However, it is an essential step forward to bring Scotland into line with the conditions south of the border. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde for promoting the Bill.

David Wilshire: I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) on getting a good place in the ballot and on his choice of a Bill, which in principle is very sensible. I hasten to assure him that I do not want to resist the Bill, although there are issues that we could usefully consider; they are relevant to this Bill just as they were relevant to the original debate on Sunday trading in 1993–94.
	I welcome the Minister to the House. Our paths have crossed before, and this is our first encounter since she had to endure 39 sittings of the Standing Committee on the Proceeds of Crime Bill, in which I spoke at considerable length. I hasten to reassure her that I shall not inflict another of those experiences on her.

Eric Forth: That is disappointing.

David Wilshire: My right hon. Friend should not tempt me.
	I am deeply conscious—in fact I am proud—of being an English MP and an Englishman. I am well aware that there are occasions when people from other parts of the United Kingdom object to Englishmen poking their noses into what those people consider to be their business.

Tom Clarke: As one who has pursued a case like the one mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) in my own constituency, may I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he agrees that one of the most inspiring features of the support for the Bill is that USDAW in every part of the United Kingdom, not just Scotland, supports it?

David Wilshire: I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, but inviting me to wax eloquent about the activities of a trade union is possibly pushing me a little further than I want to be pushed on a Friday morning. I note what USDAW says, and I agree with it, but I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will understand that my enthusiasm may stop at that point.

Eric Forth: Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a classic case of, "Well, they would, wouldn't they?"

David Wilshire: I am in a charitable mood, so although I was tempted to say that, I chose not to. My right hon. Friend has said it for me. One always hears about vested interests, and we shall leave that matter be.
	As I said, I am conscious of being an Englishman involving himself in Scottish business. I can only say in my own defence that, day after day, week after week, I notice Scottish MPs getting involved in issues that concern only England, or only Surrey or perhaps even only my constituency. On this occasion, I make no apology for my involvement because I am simply learning some of the tricks of the trade from the right hon. and hon. Members from Scotland.

Jacqui Lait: Will my hon. Friend please note that our Member from Scotland does not vote on English and Welsh legislation?

David Wilshire: I am delighted to have that drawn to my attention. It is a fair point, and I can say only that it would be interesting if his principled and honourable stand were to be copied by others. I would welcome some people keeping their nose out of my business.

Tom Harris: I point out to the hon. Gentleman that this is not a Scottish Bill but a United Kingdom Bill and every Member of the House, wherever in the United Kingdom they are elected, has the right to take part in the debate.

David Wilshire: That is absolutely right. I am not disagreeing with that; the hon. Gentleman was trying to anticipate where my train of thought is going. This is indeed a House of Commons matter, and I find it almost amusing and certainly ironic that despite the much-vaunted arguments about devolution and the identity of the Scottish nation, every so often Scotland still has to return to the good old mother of Parliaments and acknowledge that, on occasion, we are a unitary state. Scottish Members come here, as necessary, to put things right in what they would argue is their country.This is not an important issue, but I touch on it for a moment to explain why the Bill comes before this House and why those in favour of it argue, "We need this in Scotland as well as in England".
	The website of the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde is quite interesting. In an argument that he repeated this morning his website says about the Bill:
	"It is quite simply wrong that shop-workers in Greenwich enjoy rights that those in Greenock do not."
	[Interruption.] Hon. Members can tell that I am an Englishman when I say "Greenock". I invite them to think about how they would pronounce place names such as Staines, which you would pronounce differently, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am sure. The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge) was quoted on the BBC news on 1 July explaining why the loophole needs to be closed. He said:
	"They are discriminating, in particular, against people with family responsibilities or religious objections, but in general against people simply because they live in Scotland."
	I find the last part of that comment fascinating. I do not quarrel with it, but I find the argument interesting in the context both of the Bill and of this Parliament. If the argument is that shop workers in England have protection that is not available to those in Scotland, so it is reasonable for shop workers in Scotland to say that they want that protection, I support it, and that is why I support the Bill in principle. However, we must think about the benefits that people in Scotland enjoy that people in England do not. I gather that students in Scotland have a different deal from those in my constituency.
	The hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde has advanced an argument for a worthy Bill in which he says that in this unitary state it is entirely right that the shop workers of Scotland have the same rights as those of England. I accept the argument that what is right for England should be right for Scotland, but I sincerely hope that when my colleagues and I argue that we ought to have the same benefits as are enjoyed in another part of the unitary state, he will support our argument and make sure that the Government give us the same deal as they are giving Scotland.

Malcolm Savidge: I find the hon. Gentleman's point rather difficult to follow. Surely this is a non-devolved issue, so it is proper for it to be dealt with in this Parliament. If this Parliament thinks that it would be good to apply in England a measure passed in Scotland, it would be proper for that to be discussed in this Parliament.

David Wilshire: I accept that this is not a devolved matter, but that is part of my argument. The other part of the argument is simply that the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde have advanced as a justification for the measure the proposal that the shop workers of Scotland should have the same benefits as those of England. That is a separate issue from which Parliament should consider the matter.
	I shall try to get the hon. Gentlemen to understand: all I am saying is that if a Scottish Member argues that the justification for the measure is simply that the same rights should apply in Scotland as in England, the same argument applies in reverse—whether or not the matter is devolved. I hope that they accept that if some people in one part of this unitary state have benefits that my constituents do not, I will argue that the benefits that apply in Scotland, which is part of the same country as mine, should apply in my constituency as well.

David Cairns: I do not wish to detain the House, but the Scottish Parliament has powers only because this House devolved certain powers to it and decided to retain others. The Bill falls slap bang in the middle of the powers that the House decided to retain and we would not debate here any issue devolved to the Scottish Parliament, so the hon. Gentleman should not say that we can discuss the matter irrespective of which Parliament is involved. The issue is for this Parliament. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Harris) said, we seek not to pass a Scottish Bill, but to amend a UK Bill. That is the crux of the matter.

David Wilshire: I quite understand that and, as I said at the outset, I have no objections to the Bill in principle. It comes here because it has to, and I support it, but that is not the point that I am seeking to get the hon. Gentleman to understand. All I am saying is that what is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. If the argument is, "This is unfair to Scotland. Please put it right," I am happy to put it right, but I look forward to the hon. Gentlemen supporting me when I use the same argument against him by saying, "What is good enough there ought to apply to my constituency of Spelthorne."

Anne Begg: One thing that we are proud of in Scotland is that we still have a vibrant comprehensive education system, so I look forward to the hon. Gentleman thinking, "That is such a good idea in Scotland, why shouldn't it be applied in England?" Will he come to the House to advocate that as a way forward for changing the education system in England and Wales?

David Wilshire: I would love to debate the failure of the Government and their education policies, but I suspect that I would not get far before you stopped me, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If the hon. Lady wants the benefit of my views on her Government's failure to get education right, I am happy to give them to her, but in the Tea Room or somewhere else, not here and now.

Eric Forth: We are paying for that system. If we were to enjoy the same education expenditure per head as Scotland, all our taxes would have to go up dramatically.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I suggest that the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) takes the advice that he gave himself a few moments ago.

David Wilshire: Yes, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I sensed a degree of restlessness and was about to do exactly that.
	May I move on to the Sunday Trading Act 1994, which gives rise to the Bill? I was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Office Minister responsible for taking the legislation through this place. If the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde looks closely, he will see that some scars that Sir Peter Lloyd and I acquired remain fairly visible. It was quite an experience.

Desmond Swayne: I hope they still hurt.

David Wilshire: They do, sometimes. I am very aware of the arguments surrounding the principle of Sunday trading.
	We must be careful that when we approve the Bill, as I hope we will, we are conscious of the shortcomings that will be introduced to Scotland. The principle of making the provisions apply there is right, but those that are being added to the protections of Scottish workers are not the ones that I would want in an ideal world. I shall give the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde an example.
	Earlier this week, we witnessed a series of free votes. If Members ever want to know what headless chickens look like, they have only to watch this place on a free vote night. Most Divisions in the Chamber on the Sunday trading legislation were on free votes. The result was that one or two proposals got majorities, but one or two were defeated—a result that Members, whichever Lobby they voted in, may not have intended. At the end of the process, colleagues, particularly Lord Alton, saw a series of amendments dealing with worries about the legislation defeated one after the other. All of a sudden, we were overtaken by a feeling of sorrow and pity for Lord Alton.

Andrew Selous: I am aware that my hon. Friend is a member of the Opposition Whips Office, but I very much relish the opportunity for a free vote. I am sure that I am not the only Member here who believes that we think hard and seriously about which Lobby to enter on a free vote. I would not equate the term "headless chickens" with that exercise.

David Wilshire: I have no doubt that my hon. Friend and a number of other Members think deeply about that and get it right, but, watching from where I do, I see one or two people whom I shall not name who are not quite so certain in their minds about what to do on such occasions. People may have argued for a free vote for a long time, but the entire argument is undermined when, as a Whip, one is approached outside the Lobby and asked, "What do we do?"
	What happened on that occasion is relevant to the present Bill. Towards the end of a series of votes, we took pity on Lord Alton, thinking, "He has lost so much, we will give him something." That was the unspoken thought, however. Everyone went into a Lobby, but we managed to wreck the busiest day for garden centres by making them close on Easter Monday. We did not intend that, so when we got up next morning and read in the newspapers what we had done, we thought, "Blimey. That was not what we thought we were doing."
	As long as the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde is aware that importing that English and Welsh provision to Scotland means bringing a problem with it and as long as he is happy to do that, I am happy to support him. If ever I get any complaints from Scotland about not being able to buy plants over Easter, I shall blame him and say, "It wasn't me, guv." If the hon. Gentleman knows what he is doing, he has my support.

Edward Leigh: There is a tactical reason for acting in that way. I am a sponsor of the Bill, and I was assured that the rights to be given to workers in Scotland would be exactly the same as those in England. I am sure that my hon. Friend supports that point of view.

David Wilshire: Absolutely right. All I seek to do is ensure that the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde is aware that the Bill is not a perfect panacea and that by importing the benefits that we in England have he is importing one or two problems as well. As long as he takes responsibility for the problems when garden centre owners beat him about the head and say, "Look what you have done to us," I am happy to support him.

Anne McGuire: May I reassure the hon. Gentleman? In Scotland, Easter Monday is not a national holiday. It is catered for under the local holiday provision. Easter Monday may be a holiday in Glasgow, but people who live there can still go to garden centres in Edinburgh, Falkirk or Stirling.

David Wilshire: I am interested in that, but will the Minister reflect on whether it would be possible if the Bill became an Act? I genuinely do not know the answer, but we can leave that be. If she wants to write to me, I would be interested to hear from her.
	As I understand the situation and as I remember the debates from all those years ago, two arguments were used as to why Scotland could safely be left out. One was that Sunday trading had been so long established there that it was part of Scottish life and should be left alone. Indeed, a number of Members on both sides of the House thought it a useful exercise of a weekend to travel for the purposes of observing Sunday trading in Scotland to discover whether we wanted the situation in England to be like that in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
	A number of people had interesting weekends, shall I say, in those cities, and they came back to report that Scotland seemed to be perfectly all right with its shops open. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, and the general view was that the arrangements in place in Scotland appeared to work. The hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde has put a good case for saying that they do not any longer, even if they did then. That is another reason for me supporting him in principle.
	Another argument that was used at the time is that the English were probably heathen while the Scots still understood the importance of the Sabbath. I did not need much persuading of that because when I was much younger I used to stay with my sister, who lived on the Moray coast. One of the summer activities that I used to enjoy was going down to Lossiemouth harbour at about quarter to midnight on a Sunday night and watching the local people shout "Heathen!" at any boat that dared to slip out of harbour before midnight.

Desmond Swayne: Quite right!

David Wilshire: My hon. Friend says, "Quite right", but I am neutral. I simply observe that when the argument was used that the Scots still respected the Sabbath, I found it quite a telling argument; I remembered that experience, so it seemed quite reasonable to exclude Scotland from the provision. However, it may now be that the fishing boats—if there are any left in Lossiemouth after the Government have sold the fishing industry down the river—go out on a Sunday and there is nobody left to shout "Heathen!" because they are all busy shopping.
	I am in favour of voluntary agreements, which are far better than being dictated to by the nanny state. It seems to me that, for a period at least, the voluntary arrangements in Scotland appear to have worked. The issue arose only recently, so since 1994 the position appears to have been all right up to a point, but we then had the Argos episode, which was at best unfortunate—other words could be used to describe it. Like everyone else, I welcome the fact that Argos has backtracked, though perhaps not as much as some people would have liked. Perhaps it has learned a lesson, but it was a bit late in the day. The Government were absolutely right to carry out a consultation exercise as a result of that episode as a problem was clearly developing.There are valid arguments about why shop workers in Scotland do not have the same protection as those in England, so the Government are entirely correct to consult. I note that the deadline for comment is 14 March, which is a month or so away. Knowing how Governments of all political persuasions work, I am sure that we will not get their considered opinion on 15 March, or even 15 April. Although the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde says that when the Bill is considered in Committee he will listen, I am concerned that today's debate may be premature, and that it would have been better to discuss the matter after the deadline and in the light of the Government's comments; perhaps we could then have had a fuller debate on the issues. It may just be that when the Bill reaches Committee, debate will be limited by the time scale. The Government love guillotines: they do not like democracy, so they trample on our ability to debate issues. The Government may still be thinking about their consultation exercise when the Bill has to come out of Committee. What should we do then? There is an argument for saying that we are debating the Bill prematurely.
	It is not as though we cannot wait a little longer. It is not as though there is no protection for shop workers in Scotland. There is the Employment Rights Act 1996. I understand the difficulties and I know that it can be a tortuous process for a worker who is sacked for not working on a Sunday to go for a general argument of unfair dismissal. I know the difficulties in getting a tribunal to accept a claim are greater. I realise that this is not an isolated issue and that all sorts of other issues can be brought in, but if we waited a few months until the Government had finished their consultation exercise, it is not as though there would not be at least some protection. It is not as though there is currently no protection for people who are sacked for refusing to work on a Sunday. I wonder whether the Minister or the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde can tell us whether the general protection offered by the Employment Rights Act has failed, or whether it has been successful up to a point. If it has been successful up to a point, there is a better argument for waiting for the results of the Government's consultation exercise.
	The Bill raises some issues that need to be explored further. One that concerned me in 1994 continues to concern me now. Suppose that someone applies to work in a shop and the manager explains, "This shop is open seven days a week. We expect people to work five days out of seven and we have a rota." Suppose the applicant replies, "I entirely happy with that. I am very willing to do my share of Sundays" and is given a job on that basis. At any time afterwards, that shop worker can change his mind and give three months' notice that he no longer wants to work on a Sunday. At the time I thought that that was unreasonable and I am still worried about it. In the case of a relatively small operation that was nevertheless big enough to be caught by the square footage limit, the bishop to whom my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West referred could suddenly arrive on the scene and convert all the workers who could then all give notice that they no longer wished to work on Sundays. That independent retailer would be in a difficult position because all the people who suddenly decided not to work on a Sunday and were protected by law would be those who had originally given an undertaking to work on a Sunday. I thought at the time, and I think now, that someone should give an indication at the point at which they are offered a job: they are entirely protected at that point.

Malcolm Savidge: The Bill became law in 1996. Before we take his point too seriously, can the hon. Gentleman tell us how often this extraordinary circumstance has occurred. How many instances of people suddenly being converted and refusing to work on Sundays have actually occurred in England and Wales?

David Wilshire: I lament the fact that the Churches in England do not seem to convert many people these days, but perhaps there will be a religious revival and we will have that problem. We must think not only about the past but about what might happen in future. Along with a number of hon. Members, I would like to see a religious revival, but I suspect that you will not let me get very far with that argument, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	There is another general issue on which the hon. Gentleman needs to reflect for a moment or two. Some employers offer more money to staff who undertake to work on Sundays. It is not just extra payment for Sundays. Some employers are prepared to negotiate an arrangement where staff get more money in return for a guarantee that they are prepared to work on Sundays. Suppose that employees enter into such an agreement and take the extra pay for two or three years and then decide they are no longer prepared to work on Sundays. Has the hon. Gentleman thought about whether he wants to encourage that situation? I am concerned that the Bill as it stands would import that potentially difficult scenario into Scotland. It certainly arises here in England.
	Another issue that the hon. Gentleman needs to contemplate involves the arrangements for bank holidays and Christmas day. The Bill protects staff against being made to work on Christmas day only if Christmas day falls on a Sunday. In my judgment, that is one of the Bill's shortcomings. I do not think that we should be able to force shop workers to work on Christmas day, but at the moment the legislation is such that the protection will apply only when Christmas day falls on a Sunday. When the Bill reaches Committee, the hon. Gentleman might give some thought as to whether or not it could be amended. I should also say that when he has achieved protection for Christmas day in Scotland, I shall demand that it is applied to England too.

Andrew Selous: I very much agree with my hon. Friend's sentiments about no one being forced to work on Christmas day, whichever day of the week it falls on, but I hope that he will be reassured by the fact that I learned only this morning that this Christmas there was a voluntary agreement between all the major supermarkets that none of them would open on Christmas day and that agreement seemed to work satisfactorily.

David Wilshire: I am delighted to hear that. In view of my strictures against the nanny state, if such a voluntary arrangement works, I am content with it.

Eric Forth: Presumably that also gives a market opportunity to shops that are owned and run by people of other faiths or no faith to provide a service for people who want to obtain much-needed supplies even on Christmas day.

David Wilshire: That is so.
	That brings me to the next issue that the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde should consider carefully. The Bill offers protection in general terms to Christians because it applies to Sundays, and to people of the Jewish faith because there is the provision that if they respect their Sabbath they can work on a Sunday but decline to work on the Sabbath. I applaud that. That is right. I am a publicly confessed Christian, so I am glad that my faith is respected in that way.
	Not all that long ago, there were debates in the House about making religious discrimination an offence, and I suspect that that issue will return. An Act that discriminates in favour of Sunday or the Jewish Sabbath but no other holy day in a week would fall foul of religious discrimination were it ever to become an offence. I can imagine how offended I would feel if I were not a Christian or a Jew that people of some faiths receive protection when those of my faith did not.

Andrew Selous: May I take my hon. Friend back to the points that I made about Mr. Copsey, whose barrister is arguing that whereas Muslims, Hindus and Jews are protected under the Race Relations Act, it would appear that Christians are not similarly protected with regard to not wanting to work on Sunday, and so it may be the Human Rights Act that finalises the matter in terms of British law.

David Wilshire: I hope that it is not the Human Rights Act that settles the matter because that Act is responsible for all sorts of things that I do not support and I would rather settle things by having a debate on the issue.

Eric Forth: Surely my hon. Friend will agree that there is a danger of our confusing race and religion, to which he made a passing reference. I hope that he will resist robustly any effort to entangle us yet further in the miasma that so-called race relations legislation has become—to the extent that it is now reaching out into other unnecessary parts of our lives.

David Wilshire: I agree wholeheartedly, but I sense that there would be some restlessness were I to start debating racial or religious discrimination.
	That brings me to the quote from the Most Reverend Bruce Cameron, to which my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) so eloquently drew the House's attention. When we debated the Act that this Bill seeks to extend to Scotland, I well remember a large number of ministers of religion lobbying all of us, and I would always pause before responding to consider how curious it is that a minister of the Christian religion, whose contract of employment requires him to work on Sundays above all days, and who has an obligation to work on Sunday, should tell me why it is wrong for people to work on Sunday. That contradiction has always bothered me slightly.
	Like my hon. Friend, I was bothered by the view of Rev. Bruce Cameron of the Scottish Episcopal Church, that
	"Neither I nor the church I represent would want to preserve Sunday for religious purposes alone."
	Why ever not? I do not particularly want to, but why on earth should a bishop of an Episcopal church whose job it is to convert people to Christianity and to respect the Sabbath be prepared to wash his hands and say that that is not what it is all about, that he does not really believe in all that, that it is incidental? That is half the reason why pews are so empty in churches in Scotland and England at the moment.
	What about the comment,
	"Many of us welcome the wider opportunities offered to people to spend their weekends in leisure and shopping."?
	Why only weekends? What is wrong with having time off on a Tuesday or Wednesday if one is no longer arguing the religious case for having Sundays off? Oh dear me. Here is someone supporting protection for people with regard to Sunday working who wants to go shopping on a Sunday. The reverend gentleman cannot have it both ways. If shopping is a wonderful activity, he should not be surprised if employers require people to be there so that when he goes to the shop, it is open. I worry about such arguments.
	I have listed the matters that I believe to be relevant, which I sincerely hope the Committee will consider. It is right and sensible to want the same protection in Scotland as in England, but I flag those issues up because the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde should understand that while he is importing the benefits from England he is importing one or two problems as well. As long as when problems come back to haunt him in his surgery he can say that he is not surprised because although he knew about them he did not believe they were sufficient to undermine the Bill's principles, I will have done my job of helping him to consider these things. If he understands the difficulties and is content, he has my support.

David Hamilton: I want to take a moment to consider what we are debating, because we seem to have lost track of that during the past half an hour. We are here today to debate a simple issue—the need to afford the same rights to every worker throughout the United Kingdom irrespective of what part they come from. I shall spend only one or two minutes on that because one or two issues need to be reinforced.
	We in Scotland are part of the United Kingdom and every hon. Member present—the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) is not present—wants to maintain that United Kingdom. Irrespective of what some might think, we have different cultures. There are different cultures throughout England, never mind between Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland, and that will continue to be the case. But in saying that, employment rights are a matter for the United Kingdom Parliament and they should be afforded to all.
	The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), in his very good contribution, talked of the rights of the individual and the pressures that many shop workers are under. It is the pressures that one does not see that so often come through. I know many in my constituency who are under pressure for different reasons. That is why they should all join the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and make sure that the protection offered by a trade union is there for them. I would encourage every worker to do that.
	Argos has been mentioned on several occasions because, as a major company, it did what some small companies do on a regular basis, but let us look at the other side of the coin. There are many good employers. My area was the first in Scotland in which IKEA opened and it gave workers the opportunity to work the hours that they chose. It was able to take on several hundred people within a short period at hours that were beneficial to the employee. That is extremely important. That was quickly followed by Tesco, which opened a 24-hour shop in Midlothian. It employs 450 people, many of them working hours that suit them. That means that single parents can work during the day while their children are at school, allowing them to earn sufficient money to keep their children in the way that they need to be kept. It allows mothers and grandmothers to care for the children at night and at the weekend.
	There are many such examples. It is important to recognise that the major companies set a trend for all the small companies. That is why the Bill is an excellent way forward.

Eric Forth: For the avoidance of doubt, is the hon. Gentleman saying that, if the matter is dealt with properly and responsibly, it is perfectly possible to get people voluntarily to work what are sometimes loosely called antisocial hours on a Sunday or even in the middle of the night? That is what suits some people in their individual and family circumstances, and it has been demonstrated to be possible if it is dealt with on a voluntary basis by a responsible employer.

David Hamilton: I accept that point. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman makes the very point that I made earlier. There are certain unscrupulous employers, however, and I believe that Argos went too far, as the voluntary code that he mentions was not adopted. That is why I believe very strongly that all employees should seek recognition.
	The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) mentioned tribunals and said how complicated the circumstances could be. I may be the only person in the Chamber who has been to a tribunal. I recognise how important proper legislation is, as the guidance that is given at tribunals is based on trade union rights and other matters set out in legislation. That is why that aspect is very important. Part of the problem for Argos workers in seeking a result at tribunals is that they are based on existing legislation and not what the legislation should be. That is why there should be a right for all. I was one of those very fortunate people who won their tribunal, but that was possible because the legislation was very clear and because the National Coal Board had breached it as it saw fit. That part of the proposals is extremely important.
	Mention has also been made of the Scotland Office and the work that it has done, for which I commend it. As I have pointed out previously, that shows what sort of work the Scotland Office can do in taking an issue and highlighting it on behalf of people in Scotland. I recommend not only that hon. Members take note and report back to the inquiry that is under way—I think that the closing date is 14 March—but that we should get word out to the various organisations, shops and employees and ensure that they make their views known.
	We should recognise that where there is low unemployment, as in Midlothian, many companies are fighting for people to come in and conditions are improving. Indeed, in my area, the local authority, which is the biggest local employer, is struggling to try to bring people in to work because of the various competing interests and the flexible working that is allowed by major companies. Let us not attack all companies; we should recognise that there are many good organisations out there and reflect that better image.

Malcolm Savidge: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) on procuring the Bill, on the excellent publicity that he has obtained for it and on a speech that was witty, lucid and comprehensive.
	It was my intention to be brief, and if I understand the pressures that I think I am getting from the Procrustean bed of the usual channels, I think that that is still my intention. Furthermore, I have already spoken on the same subject in an Adjournment debate and in introducing my own ten-minute Bill, others have already covered the topics adequately and I am conscious that there are other Bills on the Order Paper. Indeed, I am especially conscious that that is the case because I am in that rather odd position of having introduced in previous Sessions two Bills that feature on today's Order Paper, as my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Lawrie Quinn) is reintroducing the Health and Safety at Work (Offences) Bill, which I know we may not reach today, but which I hope will reach the statute book. As my hon. Friends the Members for Greenock and Inverclyde and for Scarborough and Whitby can both claim paternity of the Bills, I am not sure what relationship I can claim. Perhaps I should say that it is grandfatherhood, before somebody suggests something slightly less delicate.
	That is a good example of what should often happen in politics, as a lot of significant things in politics are achieved through a co-operative effort by a large number of different people. We often end up in politics with people claiming or being given individual credit, but a lot of people are often involved in the greatest achievements. I should like to give credit to a number of the people in that regard. First, I join my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, Central (Mr. Doran) in paying credit to the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Scotland Office for the help that was given both in private and in public. I am grateful to Department of Trade and Industry Ministers for being ready to be persuaded of the importance of the issue with which the Bill deals, and also for the work that was done with Argos and the consultation, of which I am sure we will take full and proper account in Committee.

Eric Forth: Does the hon. Gentleman also agree that one of the reasons why the Bill has an excellent chance of succeeding is that it is a classic private Member's Bill—it is modest in scope, identifies a real problem and sets out in a succinct and uncontroversial way to solve that problem? That is the basis on which most private Members' Bills tend to succeed.

Malcolm Savidge: I am happy not only to agree, but to say that the right hon. Gentleman has expressed that point very succinctly and worthily.
	I also give credit to the Bill's various supporters. USDAW has already been mentioned, as has the great support given by various churches and religious organisations. I give particular credit for the fact that some of those organisations, including some of the strictly Sabbatarian ones—I say this with particular regard to some of the comments made by the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne)—not only argued on religious grounds, but took into account the social concerns of people who did not necessarily share their beliefs. I was disappointed by some of the criticisms made of Archbishop Bruce Cameron, whom I thought wrote an absolutely excellent letter that recognised that while some in his Church would want a purely religious Sunday, others would want an only partly religious one. He also recognised that, in a pluralistic community, others would take a completely different view and have a right for their social concerns to be taken into account. I thought that the letters from Archbishop Cameron and many others were excellent in expressing support. At one stage, I began to wonder whether the hon. Member for New Forest, West was going to try to be Hampshire's answer to the Taliban. When he began to talk about the commandment and the death penalty, I began to worry that he might be reintroducing a situation in which people were getting stoned in a fashion that had nothing to do with alcoholic or intoxicating beverages.
	I should like to pay special credit to the Argos workers, especially those who lost their jobs. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, Central referred to the workers in Aberdeen, whom I obviously know best, but my impression was that they all behaved with great courage and dignity. I found it particularly impressive that, after they had lost their jobs and found employment with other companies, they still wanted to continue campaigning because they believed that there was a principle to be established for other people. If the Bill reaches the statute book, as I hope it will, particular credit should be given to those Argos workers.
	The extent to which the Bill has cross-party support was illustrated by the early-day motion on the same subject, which was supported by more than 200 hon. Members. Tremendous support has been given by hon. Members throughout the House. In particular, I want to mention my hon. Friends the Members for Dumfries (Mr. Brown) and for Western Isles (Mr. MacDonald)—but I shall not mention all the rest of them, as the Procrustean bed is acting.
	I rush on, therefore, to say that I do not wish to deal again with the whole Argos saga. The Bill brings to Scotland what the House introduced under a Conservative Government, as my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde pointed out. The idea is that it will give proper flexibility to everybody. It gives flexibility by allowing retailers to trade on Sundays and allowing shoppers to decide whether to buy on Sunday, but it also gives flexibility by allowing shop workers to decide whether to work on that day. I think that that is a proper way of proceeding, as it protects the rights of those who have religious beliefs, as well as the rights of couples and families who want to get together and people with caring responsibilities. As family and caring responsibilities fall on women in particular, it gives important protection for women. Indeed, it was noticeable that it was mostly women who suffered in respect of Argos. The Bill also extends to people who are resident in Scotland the same proper protections that are enjoyed in England and Wales.
	On 5 November, in my concluding remarks when introducing my own Bill, I said:
	"Today, I hope that we can set down a marker for legislation in the next Session that would, I hope with the support of the whole House, extend to shopworkers in Scotland the protection that is currently enjoyed by those in the rest of the United Kingdom."—[Official Report, 5 November 2002; Vol. 392, c. 145.]
	I give my very best wishes to my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde in his efforts to achieve that objective.

Jacqui Lait: It is good that legislation that affects Scotland is being debated in the House. We are, after all, in a unitary state. We look forward to further legislation—for example, legislation on the numbers of Members of the Scottish Parliament and, perhaps, on the implementation of the Norton report. That would ensure that the House was clearly seen to be representing a unitary state.

Jim Murphy: Get on with it.

Jacqui Lait: The more barracking I get from Whips, the longer my speech will take.
	I join others in congratulating the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns). I apologise on behalf of those from English backgrounds who pronounce Greenwich and Greenock similarly. We changed the law so that the hon. Member could get here and, with this Bill, he is stamping his name on legislation. Along with many others, I congratulate him on that. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge), who called himself the grandfather of this Bill and did not wish any other name to be applied to him. "Donor" may be another appropriate term, but we should not go any further into that. The hon. Members for Aberdeen, Central (Mr. Doran), for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) and for Dumfries (Mr. Brown) have in their constituencies workers who have been affected by the Argos saga. I congratulate the hon. Members on the work that they have done. I do not think that any of us would not support the stand that the Argos workers took; and I think that that reflects the nature of the support for this Bill on both sides of the House.

Frank Doran: In a long list of congratulations, the hon. Lady conspicuously omitted the shop workers union. She may wish to congratulate the union as well.

Jacqui Lait: USDAW took up the workers' point but it was the strength of the workers that drove their case forward.
	Many people have talked about the history of this issue and about why we have a particular problem in Scotland. Sitting here and listening to hon. Members' contributions, I have been reflecting on the age of some of us Scots in the Chamber. Probably only those of us who, like me, were born in the 1940s and brought up in the 1940s and 1950s—[Hon. Members: "Never!"] That is very kind of hon. Members, but I am afraid that it is true. We are the only ones who will have realised why the point that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) made about reaping the whirlwind goes back further than the opening of shops on a Sunday.
	Those of us who were born in the 1940s and 1950s in Scotland will remember what I once read described as the "cosmic boredom" of a Sunday afternoon. I was brought up in a small village in west Renfrewshire. It was so small that the only entertainment was a tennis club, and, on a Sunday, the tennis club was closed. There were no cafes, there was no church, there were no cinemas, no trains and no buses. One could do nothing. When one is a teenager, one does not want to spend one's afternoon washing the car or doing the gardening—despite what the hon. Member for Dumfries said about garden centres. Garden centres did not exist in those days.
	Perhaps because of such experiences, and perhaps because, as the hon. Member for Gordon pointed out, the dominant culture in Scotland at the time was that the Sabbath was kept holy, there was no legislation. This point may encourage my hon. Friends, but only in the 1970s, through market forces, did the public demand shopping on a Sunday, as an antidote to being able to do absolutely nothing else.
	At the time, some of us—dare I say it?—looked towards England. In England during the 1950s and 1960s, museums were open, it was possible to play some sports including tennis, one could go to the cinema and one could actually eat out. Reference has been made to bona fide travellers, and to the drinking houses with one or two bedrooms attached, as ways in which people could get a drink in Scotland on a Sunday. Many of us forget what Sunday was like in Scotland in those days.

Jim Sheridan: As the Member for West Renfrewshire, may I invite the hon. Lady back to enjoy the scenic beauty of West Renfrewshire and the pubs, clubs and shops that are now open on a Sunday?

Jacqui Lait: The hon. Gentleman will soon be receiving a letter from me to say that I will be visiting his constituency in the very near future. I look forward to going back to the village where I was brought up, Brookfield. I suspect that there will still not be much more than the tennis club. It was a lovely village and I enjoyed a very good upbringing, but there was the cosmic boredom of a Sunday afternoon.
	It was because of the dearth of things to do on a Sunday that ordinary people said that they wanted something to do. Shopping was the easiest answer and that is how the problem emerged that the Bill seeks to deal with. There had been no legislation because of the dominant cultural and religious belief that nobody would want to do anything on a Sunday. I have since checked this, but my recollection was that Edinburgh was the first place to allow the opening of a significant number of shops on a Sunday. I can see one or two hon. Members on the Labour Benches nodding, agreeing that my recollection was right. I checked with a former Member of this House, Sir Malcolm Rifkind. He was on the council in Edinburgh between 1970 and 1974, when those shops started to open. His memories were similar to mine. He felt that there was no need to change the law and that shops could just open. The council did not have to change licensing or anything of that nature to allow that to happen.
	Looking back, it amazes me that it took England so long to catch up. Often, Scotland gets there first. That has happened in a number of areas, but I am sure that Mr. Deputy Speaker would pull me up if I went into them. However, I would not say that I would want the current state of the health service in Scotland to be emulated down here.
	It was eight or nine years ago that England deregulated. Other hon. Members have referred to the difficulties in achieving that deregulation. In the 1980s, we had private Members' Bills and a Government Bill. I am sure that hon. Members here, and yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will remember that that Government Bill was defeated in this Chamber. Our then Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, was not a happy lady.
	Shops were flouting the law because of the demand to shop. I remember that local authorities gave up the unequal battle of trying to police the shops, because people wished to shop. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) has referred to the arguments made by the Keep Sunday Special organisation. The organisation was very effective in arguing against a very free opening. In due course, it was agreed that there was a need to ensure that people could act according to their beliefs and refuse to work on a Sunday if they did not want to.
	I was interested in what the hon. Member for Midlothian (David Hamilton) said about enlightened employers. He praised IKEA and Tesco for their flexible employment policies. I was slightly sad that he did not mention B&Q, which was one of the leaders in the campaign to open shops in England.

David Hamilton: B&Q does not have a store in Midlothian.

Jacqui Lait: It may not be in Midlothian but it is in many other parts of the country. It is in the lead in retailing in terms of employing people who are over the age of retirement. We do not call such people "retired"—and very valuable they are too.
	We had to ensure that, if they so wished, people had the right not to work on Sundays. Eventually, we brought in the Sunday Trading Bill, which became the Sunday Trading Act 1994. The Act gave protection to workers. We have already gone through the arguments as to why Scotland was missed out, and I commend the hon. Members who made those points. I supported the widest possible access to shopping but I also voted for the restriction to protect workers.
	I am sure that all hon. Members receive much constituency mail; we certainly all hold surgeries, and Sunday trading does not appear on the radar. Despite the anxieties of my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire, people are broadly happy. He made the valid point that only one case went to an industrial tribunal. The Argos case was settled out of court.
	It would be interesting to know the number of cases that have been settled out of court. That would be another indicator of the issue's importance to constituents. Perhaps Labour Members can present evidence from USDAW about the number of workers' cases that it has taken up. That would be a litmus test of anxiety about the subject.
	Most people are happy to shop on a Sunday. I do so because, like most hon. Members, I work on Saturdays. We probably all work on Sundays, too, but our contracts of employment do not cover that. Our constituents would be horrified if they believed that they could not contact us on a Sunday.
	Our task is to get the Bill through all its stages. A point was made about the consultation paper. The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North first raised the matter in July, but the Scotland Office did nothing. He presented a 10-minute Bill in November. Again, nothing happened until the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde won a place in the ballot. The consultation document from the Scotland Office swiftly followed, and responses must be in by 14 March. I am no longer in the Whips Office, but I used to be a Whip. Given the cross-party support for the Bill, I shall be interested to know the results of the consultation. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) mentioned that.

Malcolm Savidge: In case the hon. Lady's words are misunderstood, I emphasise that every time I raised the subject, I received sympathetic responses from the Ministers involved, including the Leader of the House and Department of Trade and Industry Ministers. In private, I received total support from the Scotland Office.

Jacqui Lait: I accept that. However, despite sympathetic responses, no action was taken until the consultation document was published, and that happened when the Bill was introduced. Perhaps "unfortunate" is too strong to describe the timing. However, unless the Minister plans to delay the Bill's passage and spend weeks on it in Committee, it is possible that the consultation will finish after the Bill has left Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne referred to that. Is the Minister planning to pre-empt the consultation?

Anne McGuire: indicated dissent.

Jacqui Lait: I therefore hope that when the Minister replies to the debate, she will solve the conundrum of how we can take account of the consultation's results if the Bill has left Committee before its completion.
	The hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. MacDonald) said that many of his constituents had responded to the consultation. Perhaps everyone supports the Bill. In that case, there is no problem. The websites of the CBI in Scotland, the Institute of Directors, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Scottish Council for Development and Industry did not refer to the measure. One therefore assumes that they are content with it. However, it would be difficult to amend the Bill in the case of substantive objections unless the Minister expects the House of Lords to make her amendments for her. If the Minister could give us some answers as to why the consultation is so out of kilter with the progress of the Bill, it would be very useful.
	I will finish—[Interruption.] If I get any more barracking, I shall continue at great length, so I would suggest that there be no more barracking from a sedentary position by any hon. Members, let alone those on the Government Front Bench. I look forward to hearing from the Minister what she plans to do about the consultation. This is a small but important Bill. No one has so far mentioned whether Members of the Scottish Parliament support it, but I am pleased to place on record that the Conservative MSPs do so.
	I congratulate the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde on introducing the Bill, which will almost certainly be on the statute book by the end of the year. He announced a competition to find out where the term "intoxicating liquor" had come from. I would like to put it on a postcard that it came from the time of either Cromwell or Victoria, because those were the two periods in history when alcohol was a naughty word in England. The Bill brings Scotland into line with England. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on introducing it, but I have just one caveat. Bearing in mind the horrendous experience of the legislation that set up the Child Support Agency, which was supported by all the parties but from which great difficulties ensued, I hope that no difficulties flow from this Bill.

Anne McGuire: I feel that we have been round the houses this morning. I had not realised how much I had not missed the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) until he spoke for 34 minutes today. I wonder whether, when he was a child in Lossiemouth, anyone ever asked him if he would just haud his wheesht for a while. I will translate that later for those who do not know the expression.
	I am also aware that there seems to be some misunderstanding about what happened in Scotland in relation to Sunday trading. I suspect that most of us here remember the wee shops, as we would call them, being open on a Sunday. I expect that my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Rosemary McKenna) would have had an ice cream in Jaconnelli's café on the Maryhill road on a Sunday, and the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) would probably have wandered down University avenue and managed to buy half a dozen rolls on a Sunday morning and have a wee coffee—I am not sure whether they had invented coffee when he was at Glasgow university—in the university café. Certainly, Crolla's would have been open, on Parliamentary road. I remember our shops in Easterhouse—I should say that we did not have any tennis courts in Easterhouse—

Jacqui Lait: Will the Minister give way?

Anne McGuire: No. Let me get into my flow, please.
	I remember going round on a Sunday to collect some messages from my mother. On one occasion, I had to get some bleach. While we did not have tennis courts, we always managed to buy bleach for the toilets on a Sunday. I remember spilling the bleach on my new Sunday shoes, and I found out that my mother believed not only in Sunday trading but in corporal punishment, as she gave me what we called a clatter across the lug.
	We have had a grand tour here today, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) on being so successful in the ballot. The Scots have been very successful in the ballots for private Member's Bills this year, because in the top 10, we also have my hon. Friends the Members for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy) and for Hamilton, South (Mr. Tynan). That is an indication that Scottish Labour Members see this as a United Kingdom Parliament and are willing to participate in its affairs.
	In view of the comments from the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) about how much she welcomes the fact that we are a United Kingdom Parliament, perhaps she will encourage the hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Duncan) to start voting as a United Kingdom Member, and to vote now and again on Scottish issues, as we are doing today. He, like the hon. Lady, makes such a virtue of the fact that he did not vote on some legislation that it would have been nice to see him today—especially in the light of the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Brown), who said there had been difficulties in his area, part of which he shares with the hon. Gentleman.

Jacqui Lait: I do not want to embarrass the Minister, but my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Duncan) is not present because of the arrival of a rather high-profile family in his constituency.

Anne McGuire: I accept that, but I would mention that the hon. Lady raised the issue of who votes where and then decided to complicate matters by mentioning that ours was a United Kingdom Parliament. Let us leave that aside, however.
	I especially congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde on introducing a Bill that is short but that will bring considerable benefit to workers in Scotland. I also congratulate those doughty hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge), for Aberdeen, Central (Mr. Doran) and for Dumfries, and all those who gave sterling support to the Argos workers last year. In fact, I think that we should thank Argos for highlighting a gap in the law. I understand that "lacuna" is the parliamentary term. I am pleased that the Bill appears to have been given a fair wind by Members on both sides of the House.
	As hon. Members have said, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has taken a direct interest in the position of shop workers and betting shop workers in Scotland, and the risk of discrimination against them in relation to Sunday working. The background to the legal position has been well rehearsed by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde and by others and I shall not repeat what they said, but I want to reinforce what has been said about the then Government's position in respect of the 1994 Act.
	As my hon. Friend said, it is interesting that, although there was a free vote on the deregulation of Sunday trading, it did not apply to the extra legal protection for workers. I am therefore delighted to echo the tribute that my hon. Friend paid to my right hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) for his prophetic words at the time. He clearly perceived the likely effects of the lacuna in a law that did not extend legal protection to workers in Scotland. Admittedly, the voluntary agreement has worked for a number of years, but the then Conservative Government had an opportunity to extend the legal rights to Scotland and decided not to take it.
	My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's involvement with the issue arose from representations on behalf of a number of former Argos employees in Scotland who had lost their jobs for refusing to work on Sundays. She met the Argos chief executive, Terry Duddy, and senior management to discuss the issues. I wish that I had been a fly on the wall, and I am sure many other hon. Members feel the same.
	It was clear that the company had decided to take advantage of the different legal situation in Scotland to require its employees to face the prospect of regular or occasional Sunday working even when individuals had objected. Argos stores in the north-east of Scotland were the focus of particular publicity, and I acknowledge the contribution of hon. Members who represent that part of the world. I will not comment on the right of Argos management to seek to deploy workers in whatever way suited its business needs, because, as I said earlier, its actions highlighted the gap in existing legislation. I certainly do not wish to criticise the company for taking account of commercial considerations, and choosing to depart from a voluntary agreement which—as many Labour and, to be fair, Opposition Members have recognised—paid dividends to workers.

Russell Brown: My hon. Friend mentions the commercial considerations, and under normal circumstances such considerations might have been appropriate. However, the commercial considerations of Argos at that time were no different from those that other businesses had to take into account.

Anne McGuire: I accept my hon. Friend's point, but the reality is that Argos identified a gap in the law. It took a decision for its own best reasons, and although I do not accept them, it was Argos's decision and it had the right to take it. In that sense, we need to be at least halfway generous towards Argos.
	I should say that I have no axe to grind so far as Argos is concerned. I have a couple of sofas from Argos that are really quite comfortable, and other Members probably do as well; then again, perhaps not. I reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Western Isles (Mr. MacDonald) that, in addition to being able to book online with it, Argos delivers to the Western Isles via the fish lorries. I have had sofas delivered to the Western Isles, for which Argos charges a very modest additional sum. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) wishes to comment on Argos's trading agreements with Orkney and Shetland, I should be delighted. [Interruption.] When a Minister offers to give way—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that the hon. Lady has done sufficient advertising for the time being.

Anne McGuire: [Interruption.] I am delighted to see that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson), who is the Minister with responsibility for aviation, has arrived.
	I want to deal with a couple of specific issues that were raised about the consultation, particularly by the hon. Member for Beckenham. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland launched the consultation on 19 December last year. It was designed to seek views on the case for extending the relevant legal provisions in the Employment Rights Act 1996 to afford shop and betting office workers in Scotland the same legal rights as those in the rest of the country. She also offered a number of key stakeholders among employers and employee representative organisations a chance to meet Ministers in the Scotland Office to discuss the proposals. As the hon. Member for Beckenham rightly said, the consultation exercise invites responses by 14 March, and we have already had a number of requests for meetings with groups and organisations to discuss the consultation paper.
	I want to take this opportunity to reassure the House that we will be able to feed in the results of that consultation before our debates in Committee. As I understand it, the first meeting of the Committee is scheduled for 4 April, and we shall certainly make the results of the consultation available.

Jacqui Lait: I am delighted for those who have sent in responses to the consultation that the date is 4 April, but if I were the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) I would be most upset, because the chances of his Bill's getting through are very limited if the Lords take a dislike to it.

Anne McGuire: That is the current scheduling as I understand it, but as a former Whip the hon. Lady will recognise that sometimes such dates are moveable feasts. To reassure her, what I am trying to explain to the House is that we are confident that the results will be in the hands of Members before the Bill goes through its various processes in this House.
	I welcome this opportunity to inform the House that I am arranging to have published today a regulatory impact assessment, setting out the estimated costs and benefits of a measure to change the law in Scotland on Sunday working. As is often the case, we have had to make certain assumptions and calculations about the precise impact on financial and human resources, and it is in some ways difficult to predict just exactly how many workers may choose, at the end of the day, to exercise their right to opt out of Sunday working. Where Sunday working cannot be covered by other employees, however, it will be largely a matter of transfer costs for employers as they will not be obliged in law to find a weekday alternative for anyone who decides to opt out of Sunday working.
	I am arranging for a copy of the RIA to be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses today. Copies will also be issued to everyone who received the direct consultation paper in December. A copy will also be placed on the Scotland Office website.
	I am delighted for various reasons—some of which I have briefly highlighted—that the Government fully support the principles embodied in the Bill. As well as thanking individual Members, especially on the Labour Benches, for their vigour, energy and dedication in sponsoring the measure, I also congratulate Members who promoted the consultation exercise in communities in Scotland. As a result, many organisations contributed views and comments both to Members and to the Scotland Office. The consultation has provided a good model to show how MPs can discuss with their local communities matters of direct and specific interest to them.
	We shall work closely with my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde to ensure that responses to the Government's consultation exercise on Sunday working are carefully considered. In the course of the remaining stages of the Bill's progress, we undertake to table amendments where we consider that they will improve the arrangements set out in the measure.
	I am sure that other hon. Members will join me in thanking my hon. Friend for giving priority to this important measure from his advantageous position in the ballot. In a modest but important way, his measure would change for the better the working lives of many employees in Scotland who want to opt out of Sunday working without the risk of losing their jobs. The Government and the trade union movement, especially USDAW, have accepted that basic tenet in relation to workers in the retail industry. The Bill will have a place in the raft of measures being pursued by the Government to help to improve the work-life balance more generally, and I and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland wish it a fair wind.

David Cairns: With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall be brief. I understand that on these occasions it is the custom for Members in my position not to respond in detail to every point that has been made but to restrict themselves to a few general remarks.
	I reiterate my earlier comments in thanking the hon. Members who have come to the House today to support the measure, especially those whose constituencies are outwith—a fine Scottish word—Scotland. I am extremely grateful for their support. Mention has been made of the excellent campaigning work undertaken by the shop workers union USDAW. I am more than happy to join in those tributes. The union has been a credit to its members and has fought the campaign all the way. I am grateful for its support, too.
	Like other speakers, I pay tribute to the tenacity and courage of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. She is a doughty champion of the rights of Scottish workers and it is no coincidence that even today she is in her constituency fighting to protect 1,000 jobs that are under threat. We all wish her every success in that difficult fight.
	Some hon. Members, especially those on the Opposition Benches, have urged me to go further and make the Bill much wider. The other day, someone said that in life one either ends up as a good example or a horrible warning. It is my desire to be a good example to future winners of the ballot for private Members' Bills by introducing a Bill that is narrow and focused and that addresses a particular, pressing injustice. That is what the Bill does and, once again, I commend it to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 63 (Committal of Bills).

Aviation (Offences) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Frank Roy: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	I thank hon. Members for being present today on what is obviously a very busy constituency Friday for all of us.
	Antisocial behaviour by passengers on aircraft, commonly known as air rage, has become an increasingly common problem for people who fly and in the media in the past few years. Incidents have been reported in the media and the travelling public—our constituents—are now well aware of the possible danger that air rage incidents can cause while flying.
	For many people, flying is already a stressful enough experience without having to worry about the behaviour of someone sitting in the next seat. We all know people who are terrified when they go on planes—they are terrified on take-off, when they are up in the air and, of course, when they land—but being confronted by a drunken and disruptive passenger sitting beside us is terrifying, too. It is terrifying to meet someone like that in the street as we go about our normal business or in pubs and clubs, or even family restaurants and fast-food stores on street corners.
	Many of us naturally tend to step away from disruptive behaviour to find a safety zone because we are frightened for ourselves, our families and the people with us. We do not want confrontation—there is also an element of embarrassment about taking on such hoodlums—but when we are in a steel tube, flying at 500 mph, 30,000 ft in the air, it is a totally different problem. Where do we go on an aircraft? The disruptive behaviour is right next to us; we are aware how far off the ground we are and how fast we are travelling, but we have nowhere to go. Unfortunately, air rage has become more prominent in the past few years. Incidents of air rage can, if they get out of hand, have serious consequences for life, whether on a small aircraft or a 747.
	Figures show that there has been a 400 per cent. increase in air rage incidents worldwide since 1995. More than 10 per cent. of those incidents have led to violent confrontations. In the United Kingdom, a total of 1,055 incidents were reported in the year up to March 2002. The Civil Aviation Authority categorised 50 per cent. of them as significant and a further 5 per cent. as serious. I repeat that 55 per cent. are significant or serious.

Desmond Swayne: How many of the significant events actually involved smoking in the loo?

Frank Roy: Unfortunately, I do not have those figures, but I know that the CAA would be happy to get them for the hon. Gentleman. However, he is right to mention smoking because it starts a series of events on aircraft, and I will say more about that later. About 45 per cent. of the air rage incidents were categorised as alcohol-related.

Malcolm Bruce: Does the hon. Gentleman feel that Sir Richard Branson is setting a bad example by suggesting that Courtney Love, who has behaved disruptively and abusively on a plane, is welcome at any time to fly on his aircraft? Is that really the message that should be given?

Frank Roy: No, it certainly is not the right message. I do not care whether people are famous or infamous—they should behave, and if they do not behave, as a fellow passenger, I would not like to see them back on an aircraft that I was on.
	I had not realised the trouble that has often been caused and what has actually happened in air rage incidents. Worryingly, there are many times when an aircraft must divert to another airport while on its flight, or discontinue take-off and taxiing procedures and return to its stand at the airport. We also know of incidents in which passengers had to be physically restrained by handcuffs or straps at the order of the airline captain. Alternatively, a member of the crew or a fellow passenger who came to the aid of the crew had to sit beside that disruptive passenger to calm them down or, depending on their size, to frighten the life out of them to make sure that they do not carry on with their behaviour. I ask all Members: how would they, their families or their constituents' families feel if that happened just two rows away from them? It must be an absolutely horrendous experience.
	Fortunately, serious incidents are rare, but we must remember that it is often the hard-working cabin crew who bear the brunt of air rage: those who earn their living by serving passengers and helping them to enjoy their flight as much as possible. When air rage occurs, a cabin crew member, perhaps a young female or a young male, will find themselves up against an unruly passenger.

Jim Sheridan: I commend my hon. Friend for this worthwhile Bill. Will he agree that a number of air rage incidents are dependent on what happens prior to getting on the aircraft? Last Friday, when attempting to get home to Scotland from work, we were subjected to the worst kind of congestion caused by 2 in of snow at London Heathrow. People were subjected to disgraceful conditions. It is any wonder that there are problems on aircraft when people are treated like that?
	On the specific point about staff, the way staff at Heathrow airport were treated by the general public—and by some first class passengers, who were certainly not first class citizens—and some of the comments to which they were subjected were disgraceful. My hon. Friend is right: they suffered the brunt of the incompetence at Heathrow last Friday.

Frank Roy: My hon. Friend is quite right. Sometimes, the bad behaviour and nervousness starts before people get on the plane. There is no doubt about that. When I first considered this Bill—for the record, I am teetotal, but I am not against drink—I asked myself whether taking alcohol off flights was the answer to some of the drunken and destructive behaviour. That would not be right either, however, as people enjoy a drink, many find it relaxing, and I have been told by the industry that it defuses the situation for many, as a glass of wine offers an escape valve. It is not the alcohol that causes the problem but the people who drink it and how it affects them. There is absolutely no doubt, however, that people's behaviour pattern starts at the airport if they are held up on their way or are badly treated, as they were last Friday.

Kelvin Hopkins: I strongly support my hon. Friend's Bill and what he is saying. For the great majority of people, a drink on an aeroplane is a pleasure, and they behave well. It is the tiny minority of people for whom alcohol induces aggression about whom we are concerned.

Frank Roy: Absolutely. Alcohol is a pleasure for many people. As the airline industry has said, it helps people to relax. Very nervous people, for example, might like to drink one or two glasses of whisky or wine to calm them down. That is not the problem. The problem comes when people take it too far. From speaking to the industry over the last couple of weeks, I know that it lays great store by cabin crew assessing the situation quickly and seeing the danger of someone drinking alcohol on a flight. Indeed, earlier this week, I was lucky enough to be shown a training video of a conflict management course produced by Air 2000. I was greatly impressed by the professional training given to cabin crews. The video showed how the staff were able to recognise potential problems and to calm people down, and it also showed the wrong way to calm people down and to remove potential conflict. Air 2000 attaches such great importance to conflict management that, when its staff take the course, it insists on a 90 per cent. pass mark.

Eric Forth: Has the thought occurred to the hon. Gentleman that it might be helpful for him to invite the Lord Chancellor and the Leader of the House to a conflict management course?

Frank Roy: The right hon. Gentleman speaks for himself. [Interruption.] Perhaps he could run the course—or he may have even caused the conflict.
	In addition to requiring its staff to obtain a 90 per cent. pass mark, Air 2000 asks them to come back once a year for a refresher course. No matter how long someone works in the airline industry, things change and it is possible to become complacent. It is right for the company to carry out reassessments annually. I have also been acquainted with some of the training schedules carried out by British Airways and many other airlines. Over the past couple of months, they have all emphasised to me their ongoing concerns about air rage.
	Should an incident occur, both cabin crew and passengers have the right to expect the law to be an effective deterrent. Offenders should be arrested and ultimately prosecuted. The Bill is intended to make enforcement of the law much more effective than it is at present.
	The Bill has its origins in the report published in 2000 by the UK airports police commanders group. In recognising the potential of disruptive behaviour to endanger the safety and security of the travelling public, the Association of Chief Police Officers commissioned a group of senior officers from airports throughout the country to investigate the adequacy of police powers to deal with aircraft and airport offences.
	The report concluded that the powers of the police and the courts to crack down on air rage offences were inadequate. It highlighted the fact that the police were prevented from taking effective action, because they did not have the necessary powers to search and arrest many of those suspected of committing criminal offences on aircraft and at airports. In addition, the report found that a number of potentially serious offences carried relatively outdated minor penalties.
	A number of offences in UK law relate to disruptive passenger behaviour on aircraft. However, quite unbelievably, none of those offences carries a statutory power of arrest. When an offence does not carry such a power, the police may arrest suspects only if they are likely to injure themselves or others, or if their identities cannot be established. In this day and age, the latter is unlikely because passengers carry passports or, on domestic flights, different forms of identification.

Tom Harris: My hon. Friend's comments on the Bill's impact throughout the United Kingdom, including Scotland, are extremely important. Does he share my disappointment and anger that no Member from the Scottish National party, which purports to stand for Scotland, is here to take part in this very important debate?

Frank Roy: I am very surprised and disappointed. Aviation law affects everyone in Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales. The 5 million people in Scotland will be very disappointed that the Scottish National party has divorced itself, as it normally does, from anything to do with the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Desmond Swayne: Disgraceful.

Frank Roy: Disgraceful indeed.
	The lack of powers to detain suspects creates a number of practical problems for the police. It means that they are unable to search, fingerprint or question suspects or take witness statements. For charges to be made, the police must travel, for example, from the airport areas of Luton, Manchester, London or Cardiff to a suspect's address, which may be hundreds of miles away in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales or any region of England. The police have to do the same thing when they take statements from witnesses. Once witnesses get off a plane, they go to all parts of the country, and the police have to follow the complaint up.
	An incident that is well known in Scotland took place on 13 December when a football charter flight from Vigo in Spain to Glasgow airport was diverted to Cardiff. The captain issued a mayday call because he and his cabin crew thought that they had lost control of the passenger area.

Rosemary McKenna: I have personal experience of air rage. However, during that incident, I have been assured by constituents that the pilot overreacted. Perhaps part of the problem was the lack of a criminal charge, which the Bill would rectify.

Frank Roy: I understand my hon. Friend's remarks. Indeed, I have spoken to one or two people who were on the flight and they emphasised that the pilot overreacted. However, eight people have been arrested.

John Robertson: My hon. Friend will not be surprised to know that I have not talked to anyone who was on that flight. However, in the spirit of friendship, I agree that the pilot did perhaps overreact slightly. It may be that he did not understand the songs.

Frank Roy: Perhaps my hon. Friend is right. I am surprised that he has an interest in European football.
	Eight people have been arrested and a lot of police time has been wasted travelling between the Glasgow area and Cardiff. Frankly, the last thing the police in Cardiff needed was to waste their time on that case.

Russell Brown: My hon. Friend gave facts and figures on the number of air rage incidents. Can he break them down to determine how many have been on UK internal flights and on overseas flights?

Frank Roy: I do not have the specific figures, but the industry told me that it is a problem throughout all classes of travel, whether it be economy or first class, domestic or international.
	On the destructive behaviour in December, many Labour Members know that I am greatly interested in football. I have regularly attended European matches abroad for nearly 30 years, although I usually go only once a year, because my team does not normally do very well. I have spoken to the airline industry and other sports bodies about the growing phenomenon of people being drunk on aircraft. It used to be the case that many people from Scotland who went to football games abroad stayed overnight because it was not possible to return until the next day. Now a club can expect to take 4,000 or 5,000 supporters to a game and return immediately after it. That contributes to the growing problem and we need to address it. No drink was allowed on the flight from Vigo to Cardiff and I am glad that drink is not allowed on most similar flights.
	Hon. Members should think about what happens when constituents go to watch their football team on a day trip to Spain or wherever. If, for example, the flight leaves Glasgow airport at 7.30 am, people will have been in the airport since about 6, and they will have got up at 3 or 4 to get there. If the flight is to Spain or central Europe, people will arrive in the centre of the destination town by midday. I like to go to the museums, cafés and other social areas in any town that I am visiting, but many people will spend their whole time drinking in pubs and cafés. They will have been drinking before they got on the plane and they will spend the afternoon drinking.
	The football match may not be until 8 o'clock at night. People will drink during the game and then will return to the airport at about midnight. We must remember that they have been out of their bed since 4 am, and many of them will have been drinking all day. The security people at the airport are not concerned about whether people are drunk or whether they enjoyed the game; they simply want them off the bus and on to the plane as quickly as possible. It makes no difference whether people are drunk or sober.
	On many occasions during the past few years, I have seen people who are far too drunk to travel being put on a plane. They fall asleep, and they wake up when they arrive back in the United Kingdom. Even worse, in Porto a year and a half ago, I saw someone who was absolutely out of his mind with drink being carried up the steps to the plane and being put into a seat. Some people think that that is funny; they say, "Look at that guy. He's obviously had a great time." But we must ask ourselves what would have happened if there had been an emergency on that flight.
	People who are that drunk would be incapable of strapping themselves into their seat, following instructions or vacating the aircraft quickly, so they would be a danger not only to themselves but to everyone else. On a plane carrying 300 people, even if 10 per cent. of the passengers have far too much drink in them—and hon. Members know that that is a conservative estimate—the potential for disaster is great.
	I hope that the airline industry takes note of this warning, and I hope that it speaks to football and rugby clubs. It must stress that their members have to be treated the same as every other passenger, and, if they are not to commit an offence, they also have to behave the same as every other passenger. For their own sake, and for everyone else's, they should not be allowed to board the aircraft if they are drunk and incapable.

Sandra Osborne: It gives me great pleasure to support my hon. Friend's Bill. Does he agree that many people flying to football matches in Europe are likely to go from Glasgow Prestwick airport because there are so many low-cost flights available? That has opened up access to people who could not previously have afforded to go to such matches. Does he agree that the majority of people who take those flights have every right to do so safely and that they should not be adversely affected by the minority who cause trouble?

Frank Roy: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have been talking about the football charter flights that go from Glasgow international airport, but the same number of people will travel from Prestwick with companies such as easyJet and Ryanair to the airport that is nearest the football game. However, such flights are used not only by boisterous football supporters—I am not saying that they are unruly, but they will certainly have been drinking—but by passengers who are travelling on business or on holiday. Those people may be with their husband or wife or their children. Such flights can be a frightening experience. That is why both chartered airlines and scheduled airlines must take account of this ongoing problem.

Frank Doran: My hon. Friend is making a persuasive case, but as one who does not have his experience of travelling abroad with his football team, mainly because my team does not have the same opportunities, although we are working on that, I am concerned about the heavy responsibility on the airline industry.
	From my hon. Friend's remarks, I take it that he feels strongly that the airlines are not meeting that responsibility, although the problem is not new, as we have had it ever since the railways were invented. British Rail was forced to have a railways police, and that became part of the provision for passenger safety. Does he see the need for a similar arrangement to be made on our airlines, with them paying the cost of policing?

Frank Roy: That is a good idea, and it is worth looking into. If a company charters a plane, it gets two or three part-time stewards to go to the game and steward people all through the day, but they cannot, with any authority, tell people what to do on the flight.

Hugo Swire: I take on board what the hon. Gentleman says, and he makes a valid point about the mix of family and business travellers who perhaps get caught up in the culture of a weekend away for football followers; but what are his feelings about flights that, over the summer months, are increasingly dedicated to sybaritic behaviour as people fly out to clubs in Ibiza or Majorca? They are encouraged to go clubbing all night and return the next morning, and that must have a bearing on what he suggests.

Frank Roy: The hon. Gentleman is exactly right—that is a problem as well. I mentioned it to the industry and asked whether the Ibiza flights are worse, but it said that they are no worse than family flights to Florida, Tuscany or anywhere else. That surprised me, but the industry also said that the problem certainly exists with bigger groups of perhaps 10. The peer pressure is slightly different and people are noisier, which tends to create problems. It also said that, equally, domestic arguments and domestic disruptive behaviour on flights are a problem. It is embarrassing if a husband and wife start arguing or fighting beside people. They say, "It's nothing to do with me," but at 30,000 ft it has to do with them.

Hugo Swire: I fully take on board what the hon. Gentleman says, but there is a distinction between what I would call mixed flights and those dedicated to sybaritic behaviour. I am not seeking to be Cromwellian—if people want to fly out of Exeter or anywhere else to spend 24 hours clubbing at Manumission, or whatever it is called, in Ibiza and then come home, that is entirely up to them and to be encouraged—but their behaviour has an effect, perhaps a potentially negative one, on the cabin crew, although not necessarily on the other passengers, who would probably largely be in the same state. I am concerned about the security of the cabin crew.

Frank Roy: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I hope that the airline industry reads the debate and takes on board everything that has been said.
	The Bill would put into law recommendations made by airport police commanders in respect of in-flight offences. Clause 1 would introduce police powers of arrest to deal with drunk or disruptive passengers on aircraft. In England and Wales, an arrest by a police constable without a warrant can be made only if the alleged offence is classed as arrestable under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. To be arrestable, an offence must carry a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment or more. However, the offences cited carry only a maximum two-year penalty. Therefore, to make them arrestable, it is necessary to include them in a list of specific arrestable offences.
	As PACE covers only England and Wales, to make the new offences arrestable in Northern Ireland and Scotland they must be inserted at the end of article 26(2) of the Police and Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 and after section 82(3) of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, which covers Scotland.
	Clause 2 would amend the Civil Aviation Act 1982 to allow the possibility of introducing a maximum penalty of five years for an offence relating to endangering the safety of an aircraft or a person in an aircraft. That is clearly serious compared with drunkenness or disruptive behaviour, and the current two-year penalty is insufficient for such a serious matter. Increasing the maximum penalty to five years would automatically make this offence arrestable. Although the Bill is short and modest in its scope, the changes that it proposes would undoubtedly make enforcement of the law more effective.

Edward Leigh: Once the Bill becomes law, the offences will be arrestable, but who will do the arresting on the aircraft? Does the hon. Gentleman envisage that no extra powers will be given to anybody on the aircraft? As very few aircraft carry policemen, these people will have to be restrained somehow by the cabin staff or other passengers and then await arrest at the airport; in which case, does the Bill improve the situation in the air?

Frank Roy: As the Bill stands, the people doing the arresting would be the police at the destination airport.

Desmond Swayne: I am interested in the arrestable offences set out in schedule 1A to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. I notice that throughout that schedule references are made to any person being able to carry out the arrest. I would expect that if a passenger is doing something serious enough to be restrained on the aircraft, that would amount to an arrest.

Frank Roy: Obviously in the situation that the hon. Gentleman describes, there could be a citizen's arrest, or the captain could order an arrest, but under normal circumstances arrests would be carried out by the local police at the destination airport.
	The Bill would implement recommendations made by the police and supported by airline trade unions. From the many meetings that I have had, the Bill also has the complete support of those in the airline industry including the Civil Aviation Authority, the UK Flight Safety Committee, the British Air Transport Association, British Airports Authority, the Board of Airline Representatives in the UK, and such airlines as British Airways, Britannia Airways, British European Airways and Virgin.
	I hope that hon. Members will agree that this is a sensible and non-controversial proposal. It is designed to protect hard working airline staff and all our constituents, no matter where they live in the United Kingdom. It is a proposal that may one day save people's lives.

Eric Forth: The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy) has undoubtedly tried valiantly to explain to us why this Bill is desirable and what its effect would be, but so far he has not quite persuaded me. I do not think that he has persuaded my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) either, but we shall return to that.
	At one level, as I said briefly about the previous Bill, this is a model private Member's Bill. It is succinct and narrow in its focus and the hon. Gentleman has explained why we need such a measure at this stage. For those reasons, such a Bill would normally be welcome. I am not yet saying that this one is not, but my slight suspicion is that it has that whiff of the Government handout disguised as a private Member's Bill—a practice that I have always deprecated. Because they cannot or will not find time in their own legislative programme to do something that they want to do, the Government wait for the private Member's Bill ballot and find a hapless or willing volunteer to do their work for them. That may not be exactly reprehensible—

Tom Harris: My hon. Friend is the last person to need my defence, but the right hon. Gentleman should at least acknowledge that his record on campaigning on aircraft safety and other regulations is second to none. This is not a measure that has been forced on him by any Minister. I know personally that he has a long interest in the subject.

Eric Forth: I am sure that the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw is grateful for the hon. Gentleman's stout defence. I shall not press the point unduly. I am saying simply that when Bills seem to have a provenance such as I am about to describe, one has reasonable grounds for suspicion that they may be Government Bills coming through the private Member's Bill procedure, and I would certainly deprecate that.

Desmond Swayne: I do not know whether this information will assuage or inflame my right hon. Friend's suspicions, but I draw to his attention the remarks of Lord Whitty on 1 September 1999, then a Minister with responsibility for transport, when he said:
	"I shall be considering with the Home Secretary increasing the maximum penalty to five years for endangering an aircraft or its passengers. This increase would be subject to parliamentary time being available."

Eric Forth: I did rather have that in mind when I was coming to my conclusion. We need not get bogged down in this, I am just saying that it is something that I bear in mind when I come to the House on a Friday, as I do whenever private Members' business is on, unlike other hon. Members who seem to have other things to do than legislate, because I am not sure that we should be making the Government's job easier and easing their legislative programme by allowing them to get part of it through the private Member's Bill route. One approaches a Bill such as this with some scepticism.

Edward Leigh: This is an interesting constitutional point. My right hon. Friend occupies a distinguished place in the House. Is he suggesting that when the next Conservative Government are elected we will see rather fewer handout Bills?

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. We are debating the Aviation (Offences) Bill.

Eric Forth: I certainly hope that we would see far fewer aviation Bills, or indeed Bills of any other kind, that is for sure.
	The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw rightly dwelt at some length on the problems caused by what has loosely become known as air rage. Let us redesignate it gross misbehaviour on an aircraft. I fly frequently myself and I fully understand what he is saying. Not only is it a cause of some fear and discomfort to other passengers and to the cabin crew, as has been mentioned, but ultimately, if it is a sufficiently serious incident, it could endanger the aircraft itself and be a danger to life.

Hugo Swire: Does my right hon. Friend believe that this would be a better Bill if it also addressed the behaviour of the pilot and the cabin crew? We recently had evidence of yet another captain of a commercial airliner being pulled off a plane at the last minute because he was allegedly under the influence of alcohol. If it did that, would it not be a better Bill?

Eric Forth: My hon. Friend raises an important point, to which I shall come later when I start to analyse the Bill. However, I am only at the preliminary stages of my preamble to my analysis of the background to the Bill. I shall come to the Bill itself in due course. I have it here in my hand. In clause 1, proposed new paragraph 11A of schedule 1A to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 refers to
	"specified behaviour by a person in an aircraft towards or in relation to a member of the crew".
	I shall want to discuss later whether that person could also be a member of the crew, in which case my hon. Friend's point might be covered. However, I am getting ahead of myself and I am sure that he would not wish to disrupt the rhythm of my thoughts or my remarks.

Jim Sheridan: The right hon. Gentleman has just said that he is a frequent flyer, and I assume that he means from an English airport. Given his unsustainable and false accusation in the previous debate that somehow England subsidises Scotland, is he aware of the overpricing of flights from Scottish airports compared with those from English airports?

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is going wide of the Bill.

Eric Forth: I am almost sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you have rightly prevented me from engaging in that discussion. It may be for another day, but let us park it, as I think they say in modern parlance, and press on.
	What puzzles me is not only what happens on the aircraft, but what happens before people board it—a point that the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw rightly mentioned—and when they disembark. We need to get it clear in our minds how far we believe that provisions such as those in the Bill will affect those different stages of the journey in relation to misbehaviour, whether brought about by alcohol consumption or anything else. I shall broadly characterise those issues—with my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough sitting beside me, I am slightly nervous to do so—as the jurisdictional elements.
	However, before we even get to that matter, what puzzles me is whether the number of incidents is increasing. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw said with great conviction that incidents of so-called air rage were increasing, although I do not think that he provided many figures to support that assertion. My figures do not bear that out, and I do not think that the circumstances are necessarily quite so simple. Indeed, I have some figures suggesting that the number of incidents has decreased in the past two or three years, partly because of the measures already taken by the airlines themselves, for which we must give them due praise.

Frank Roy: The number of incidents did indeed decrease for a while after 11 September, after which they started to increase again.

Eric Forth: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, which is helpful. My figures refer to the 1,055 incidents in the year to 31 March 2002 that I think he mentioned. That represented a decrease on the 1,250 incidents in the previous 12 months. I do not want to fall out with him about that issue, as it is not crucial. There are a lot of incidents, they are a problem, and that is what must be dealt with, so I do not want to get distracted too much by whether the figures are going up or down.
	On the seriousness of the incidents, my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) asked whether a significant number were caused by people smoking in lavatories. The figure that I have is 36 per cent., or one in three. That activity may be in breach of the law—for example, United States federal law certainly prohibits smoking on aircraft over the United States—and it may or may not be a hazard, but I would not have thought that it falls into the category with which the Bill is concerned. We must be circumspect about considering all incidents in the same way and threatening to apply similar penalties in respect of each of them.

Desmond Swayne: I wonder whether smoking itself might be an issue. The fact is that people who smoke tend to become tetchy if they are denied the ability to do so for a substantial period. A more liberal smoking regime might solve part of the problem.

Eric Forth: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. Funnily enough, it relates to what the promoter said in the context of alcohol. We can all agree that drinking in moderation can help to settle people's nerves and make them less nervous on aircraft—or anywhere else. The same may apply to those who are addicted to nicotine. The issue arises when they go beyond that and move from being relaxed by a drink or a cigarette to becoming violent. However, I am not aware of many violent smokers, so the issue applies only to drink. That is what we are considering, although I do not think that we should be sidetracked into reopening the issue of whether smoking on aircraft is a good or a bad thing. In the United States, a solution that has been tried is all-smoking flights. That is an interesting thought, but I do not think that the idea ever got off the ground.
	Let me return to jurisdiction. My brief tells me that the 1963 Tokyo convention established jurisdiction over offences committed on board aircraft and involved the extradition of offenders. Apparently, the country in which the airline is registered has the authority to apply its own laws to passengers on board. If anything happens on a United Kingdom-registered aircraft when the doors close, UK law is applicable. We have jurisdiction over any aircraft that lands in the UK. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw graphically described the lacuna in that: people who misbehave or drink excessively before they board the aircraft cause the problem after boarding that the Bill is intended to tackle.
	Sadly, I cannot understand how the measure will deal with such a problem. If the authorities on the ground do not prevent people from boarding, can the people in charge of the aircraft deny access to it? My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, with his extensive legal knowledge, may be able to help, but I fear that the Bill cannot tackle the problem. Perhaps the Minister can help us.
	If those in charge of an aircraft in another country were able to deny access to it, that would solve the problem. For example, if I am in Malaga, have too much to drink and attempt to board an aircraft but the people in charge say, "You cannot come on board in your condition," that would go a long way to resolving the difficulty that the promoter identified. I shall deal with drinking on the aircraft later.
	Clause 1(1)(b) relates to
	"a provision which prohibits a person from being drunk in an aircraft".
	One reading suggests that access to the aircraft could be denied to someone who had drunk excessively, but another suggests not. If the person has not boarded the aircraft, the Bill may not apply. I hope that the Minister can help us with that important point.

Hugo Swire: I broadly agree with my right hon. Friend. Does he agree that if someone on board a domestic airliner in a foreign airport is to be given the power to refuse entry to passengers who are inebriated or pose a threat to others, it should be the captain? He or she should make the ultimate decision.

Eric Forth: That sounds right, and I am grateful for my hon. Friend's helpful suggestion. It ties in with the matter that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough raised earlier about the identity of the person who will have the new power of arrest under the Bill. The promoter implied that only Mr. Plod had that power. Perhaps the captain of an aircraft should be the person to whom the powers in the Bill are granted, or perhaps a citizen's arrest can be effected. However, the Bill does not provide for that. That may pose a difficulty in Committee.

Edward Leigh: It is not up to me to try to explain the Bill, but the opening description of it was inadequate. The law is clear: the Bill will make no difference to the powers of anybody on the aircraft to let people on the aeroplane or to arrest them when they are on board. Existing common law and rights of property will deal with that. The Bill will simply allow the police to arrest someone who has caused a disturbance once the aeroplane has landed in the United Kingdom.

Eric Forth: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's explanation, because I was afraid that that was the case. If the Bill is a Government measure, the blame attaches to the Government, not the promoter. Worthy though it may be, it will not do much good.

Desmond Swayne: I disagree. I hope that the Minister will clear up the confusion. I understand that the Bill tries to create an arrestable offence, which carries a five-year penalty or falls within schedule 1A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The schedule makes it clear that the offence is arrestable by any person, not necessarily a police officer. I presume that that applies to all arrestable offences.

Eric Forth: I am partly encouraged by that helpful comment, although it could lead to some interesting possibilities. If we are talking about what I, in my layman's terms, would call a citizen's arrest—

Desmond Swayne: indicated assent.

Eric Forth: In that case, we are talking about anyone on an aircraft being able to arrest anyone else. Once we open up that possibility, life really does get interesting. What if the person who was misbehaving attempted to arrest a member of the crew? I am not sure that my hon. Friend has been as helpful as he intended to be. The schedule to which he has become so attached may not help him in this matter. Perhaps he could have another look at it, and expand on the idea when he seeks to catch your eye later—as I hope he will—Madam Deputy Speaker. I am grateful for his efforts, but I am not totally sold on his idea.
	My next point links in to what my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough said a moment ago. I have here a list of cases in which action was taken effectively to deal with these problems. I will not go through all of them, but one involved a flight from London Gatwick to Montego Bay in Jamaica, on which a group of passengers became disruptive and demanded alcohol. Another passenger complained and threw a drink over one of them—he did not try to arrest him; he just threw a drink over him—and an altercation broke out, and the cabin crew had to restrain them. When the plane landed in the United States, the FBI boarded it and removed the offenders. They were returned to the United Kingdom and one was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment for endangering the aircraft. Cases such as this—one or two others are mentioned in this briefing document—suggest that adequate powers to deal with them already exist. I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw is arguing that these powers should come into effect only in extreme cases.
	I do not want to go through the entire list of incidents that I have here, but recent history seems to suggest that there is a fair degree of discretion and powers to deal with these problems. As I said, that flight was going from London to Jamaica, and was diverted to the United States. The US authorities exercised their powers and the people were returned to the UK—I guess it must have been a UK-registered aircraft—and one was then sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment. I am unsure whether the hon. Gentleman has yet made a case for the additional powers in the Bill, taken against the background of what already seems to be happening. A new offence has already recently been created, and despite his valiant efforts, I am not persuaded that his case has been made beyond doubt.
	We are always very ready, in the House, to have a knee-jerk reaction and to say that, if there is a problem of social misbehaviour, criminality or whatever, we should increase the penalties available. I would not normally shrink from that, but we must be pretty certain in our own minds that simply increasing the penalties will have the effect that we desire.

Desmond Swayne: I was just wondering whether my right hon. Friend's attention had been drawn to the list of incidents that have already taken place. I notice that one of those involved, Victor Mardell of Wood Green in north London, who was indicted by a grand jury for being abusive and trying to open the door during a flight, now faces up to 20 years in prison in the United States and a fine of £163,000. I am not sure that penalties, of themselves, will provide a sufficient deterrent, bearing in mind the fact that people are often drunk when they do these things.

Eric Forth: This is the time-honoured debate about deterrence, and about how clearly the kind of people who are prone to this kind of misbehaviour on an aircraft will be thinking about the penalties that they might suffer if they misbehave. Almost by definition, they are unlikely to do so.

Hugo Swire: Would not one way of dealing with repeat offenders be for airlines to refuse to carry them for a fixed period—five or 10 years, for example—and to make the necessary information available to other airlines? Such people would thus be effectively grounded

Eric Forth: I suspect that airlines can do that already, and no doubt they do. One hears of cases in which either one airline or all airlines ban people, as I am sure airlines are free to do. I do not think we need the Bill for that purpose.

Desmond Swayne: In fact, the exact opposite has taken place in the last few days. Courtney Love, having created an incident on an aeroplane, was detained by the police for some hours and as a consequence received four tickets entitling her to travel on Virgin Atlantic Airways.

Eric Forth: I am reluctant to become too involved in that, but I think I am entitled to comment briefly. Whether Sir Richard Branson was wise to do what he did is something I hope he will think about, because the next time there is an incident on one of his aircraft he may find it rather difficult to explain the action that he is reported to have taken recently. I shall say no more, because although this is relevant, I do not want to be diverted too far.
	I now want to talk about what happened following the publication of the December 2000 consultation document on air transport policy entitled "The Future of Aviation". I have no doubt that it is dear to the Minister's heart. According to my brief there were only 92 responses to the document, which does not seem very many to me. I should have thought that if the problem dealt with in the Bill was as widespread and as serious as has been suggested, the document might have elicited a few more responses than that.
	Anyway, apparently the majority of those 92 felt that passengers should be prohibited from drinking alcohol other than that supplied by the carrier. I am not sure how that came about. Presumably, it means prohibiting—or trying to prohibit—passengers from consuming alcohol before they board the aeroplane, and then giving them alcohol.The document goes on to say—is this not typical of a Government consultation exercise?—that the majority were in favour of further action. Well, well, well. That really takes us forward, doesn't it?
	Apparently, safety is paramount. So far, this does not seem to have been a terribly fruitful consultation exercise.
	We are also told, much more helpfully in the context of the Bill, that respondents felt that powers of arrest and punishment were inadequate and needed to be strengthened. That is exactly what the Bill would do: we are getting on to something a bit more positive here. It was also felt that the police should have powers of arrest for offences under an air navigation order, not just the power of caution. There was mention of increasing the penalty to five years, making drunkenness on board an aircraft an arrestable offence, and making threatening or interfering with crew an arrestable offence as well. Excellent! All that is highly relevant to the Bill.
	Apparently—I mentioned this earlier—many respondees suggested that drunken passengers should not be allowed on board aircraft, and that there should be guidance for aircrew and ground staff to screen out drunks, prohibit them from boarding and refuse to serve them on board. It was also felt that offenders on board should be left at the nearest airport. Those strike me as sensible suggestions, but they are not in the Bill. I hope the Minister will tell us how much thought his Department gave to incorporating further measures such as that in legislation—although, of course, that cannot happen in the case of a private Member's Bill.

Edward Leigh: Airlines have power to take such action now but choose not to, presumably because they want to go on enjoying the profit from carrying a passenger even if he appears somewhat inebriated. That illustrates the limitations of statute: it is possible to legislate for anything, as we are doing yet again today, but it makes very little difference.

Eric Forth: Indeed. Let us consider some other suggestions produced by the consultation—my briefing uses the words "thrown up", rather infelicitously. They include banning alcohol from aircraft, which I should have thought was a matter for the airlines; introducing a tracking system to ban disruptive passengers from future flights, to which the same applies; making duty free available only on arrival—it is possible to purchase duty free on arrival at many airports, including, I believe, Heathrow; and better liaison with police at airports. There are a whole series of things that can surely be done already, and if they cannot, one asks why the airlines themselves are not doing them. Do they require legislation? I should have thought not. Another suggestion arising from the consultation is
	"relaxing the ban on smoking".
	My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West, who made that point earlier, will like that one. Other suggestions include
	"increasing the seat pitch, and improving air quality."
	So here are a series of perfectly sensible-sounding measures that one would have thought were completely consonant with the Bill's aims, but which do not require legislation.

Desmond Swayne: They do, however, require some thought. Although I accept that the requirement to revisit smoking would be helpful, I am not sure that it is entirely compatible with improving air quality.

Eric Forth: Indeed. That simply illustrates the inherent contradictions that tend to emanate from an exercise in which well-meaning people come up with different suggestions that perhaps make a degree of sense when taken in isolation, but which begin to show flaws when one puts them together.

Hugo Swire: It is difficult to see where all this might end. As my right hon. Friend made clear earlier, there is another factor: those who, in addition to having taken some kind of medication—perhaps to calm themselves down before flying—are served drinks by cabin staff who have no knowledge of their use of such medication. Such a combination can make people highly excitable. How does one attempt to legislate against that? If we are to carry this legislation to its logical conclusion, perhaps people should be asked to sign a form before embarking on the aeroplane, stating whether they are taking any medication which, if combined with alcohol, might give rise to extraordinary behaviour inside the cabin.

Eric Forth: Yes, and the clever person might say that they should have a blood test before they get on the plane, or a big sign around their neck stating what medication they have taken recently. What my hon. Friend says illustrates the question of how far one should try to go in this direction to deal with a perceived problem. I think we all agree that there is a problem. Those of us who fly know of the dread of sitting beside or near someone who has had too much to drink, or who is misbehaving. It is a horrible experience, and none of us would deny that, but what we are trying to get at is whether the Bill will do what it is supposed to do.
	That, rather felicitously, brings me to the Bill itself. Although it is commendably short and commendably focused, I wonder, looking at the wording, whether it is as helpful as its promoter would like to think. Before I embark on my brief analysis, let me say that I am well aware of the pitfalls of a layman such as me seeking effectively to analyse a Bill that is drawn up by a parliamentary draftsman, who comes from another planet. However, that is what we must try to do, because we are here to try to bring a lay interpretation to the language of statute, and it is always a challenge.
	Let us consider the first substantive provision in this modest Bill. Subsection (2) of clause 1, which deals with arrest without warrant, refers to
	"an offence of contravening a provision of an Order in Council under section 60 of that Act (air navigation order) where the offence relates to—
	this is the meat—
	"a provision which prohibits specified behaviour by a person in an aircraft towards or in relation to a member of the crew".
	The provision is targeted at behaviour towards members of the crew only, and not, presumably, at behaviour towards other passengers. This gives rise to the question of whether the person concerned might also be a member of the crew, a point that was touched on in an earlier intervention. I am wondering whether "specified behaviour" is intended to be an all-encompassing, completely flexible phrase that will be interpreted on the spot, or whether the intention is to give some detailed underpinning to that phrase. In other words, would there be a list of things that might be covered?
	I am open-minded on the point; I do not know which provision would be more sensible. It depends who discretion is being given to. Here, we return to our old friend the citizen's arrest. Although I should be pretty comfortable about the captain of the aircraft having that power, it is quite another matter to rely on its exercise by anyone at all.
	I do not want to nitpick, but some important considerations arise from the words
	"a provision which prohibits a person from being drunk in an aircraft".
	How will that be interpreted? Will a subjective judgment be made of the person's behaviour by someone in uniform—perhaps a member of the crew? The provision continues with the words,
	"in so far as it applies to passengers".
	That suggests that if a member of the crew was drunk they would not be covered by the provision. I suppose the assumption is that the crew member would be identified before they boarded the aircraft and took charge of it, as happened in a recent case.
	I am not very happy about the wording of the Bill. It is not as helpful as the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw suggested. I hope that when the Under-Secretary makes his contribution, he will, in his usual way, exemplify and elucidate what is in the Bill and convince us that it will be more effective than I am currently persuaded to believe. I should like to hear his comments on "specified behaviour" and on whether the drunken person might be a member of the crew. I should also like some clarification about the definition of "drunk". Will aircraft carry breathalysers or will it simply be a subjective judgment: "Oi, mate! You're drunk. You're nicked. I am exercising my renowned powers of citizen's arrest under the Aviation Offences Act."

Tom Harris: In Scottish law, there is an offence of being drunk and incapable in a public place and police officers make exactly the subjective judgments to which the right hon. Gentleman refers. I do not know whether the same would apply in English law.

Eric Forth: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I am sure that he can see the problem as well as I do: a police officer may not be available at the appropriate moment. Under the Bill, someone else on the aircraft will make that judgment and make the arrest. Sufficient doubts have been raised about those provisions to make us all somewhat anxious about their meaning.
	I am aware that if we are to give the Bill a fair wind, there is not much more time for this debate, so although there is much more that I could say, I shall exercise uncharacteristic self-restraint and resume my seat. I hope that we shall receive full explanations from the Minister, perhaps after he has heard other hon. Members' contributions. How will the Bill work? Why is it a significant step forward? Why should we allow it to go into Committee?

Rosemary McKenna: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this important Bill. I hope that we are able to persuade the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) that the Government must include it in the legislative programme. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) will respond to the points that the right hon. Gentleman raised.
	The Bill has been long awaited and deals with a problem that has affected many of us. Some people believe that drunkenness on aircraft is a recent phenomenon. It is not; I had personal experience of such a disturbance in the early 1990s. It was most unpleasant.
	I do not imagine that many Members have experienced such situations, so I want to try to give the House a sense of just how terrifying it is to be on an aircraft when an incident takes place. I was returning from Florida with my family, after a wonderful holiday. We were only one hour into a seven-hour flight when a disturbance broke out. The incident was entirely drink-related. Two men, who had clearly been drinking before they went on to the aircraft, began an altercation. Imagine the noise. Their wives tried to calm them down and their terrified children were screaming. Many of the 300-plus people on the aircraft were aware only of the noise, not of what was causing it, but those of us who were nearby were afraid that someone would be injured.
	People sitting near that kind of event have nowhere to move. They cannot remove themselves or stop their children experiencing it, and they are upset. There is no safety zone. My hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy) talked about safety zones. Normally, the minute an altercation starts, parents remove their children from the area, but they absolutely cannot do that in an aircraft.
	The staff were eventually able to calm down those two individuals, with the assistance of a female passenger, who spoke in the most severe terms to those two chaps. They were absolutely terrified. [Hon. Members: "Was it you?"] No, it was not—I was in great awe of the person who did it, and she clearly had my admiration. Even after things had calmed down, the anxiety remained for the rest of that six-hour flight. We were all absolutely terrified to move and the children were upset. We were unable to relax and enjoy the flight. It really was the most horrendous experience.
	In fact, I am absolutely certain that such incidents can have long-term effects on young children. They do not want to go back on to an aircraft if they have had that experience. They are put off flying when they are very young, and young children can be very easily affected by nightmares. It is damaging for them to encounter that kind of incident, particularly when they have had a wonderful experience at Disneyland in Florida.

David Hamilton: I have seen one or two altercations on flights, and they are terrifying for people who are already scared of flying. It is important that people in England, Scotland and Wales all work together, just as the British Transport police work in the rail system. With the massive increase in air transport, that might be a very good way forward. We should all do a bit of joined-up thinking and work together to eradicate such behaviour.

Rosemary McKenna: My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. We can address the issue in many ways. The Bill will be a definite deterrent, and it will give the police powers to deal with individuals who cause that kind of distress. Of course there are many reasons why people behave in that way. I have sat beside someone who was very drunk on an aircraft; there was no disturbance, but it was a most unpleasant experience.
	I shall conclude now because we want to ensure that the House agrees to the Bill today. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw on being successful in the ballot for private Members' Bills and on choosing this subject. He is absolutely right to choose this issue. This is an important Bill, and I commend it to the House.

Anne McIntosh: It is pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Rosemary McKenna) who, regrettably, has had personal experience of this relatively recent phenomenon. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy) on securing this Bill and on introducing it so eloquently.
	May I remind the House of my personal interests in aviation? My husband is an airline executive. He is currently with Delta airlines, having spent 34 years in the airline industry. On a personal note, that is a remarkable achievement—[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] I am delighted that my right hon. and hon. Friends recognise it. As for other personal interests, I have a small, modest interest in BA, BAA and BAE Systems, which is not registrable, but, for the purposes of this debate, it is important to declare.
	Air rage has been identified as a phenomenon for some years, and it appears to be growing. It has caught the attention of the Department for Transport, which, for some time, has been monitoring annually the incidence of air rage. That monitoring is performed by the Civil Aviation Authority. I am most grateful to the House of Commons Library for finding me the Department's most recent report on disruptive behaviour on board UK aircraft, and the analysis of incident reports between April 2001 and March 2002. I confirm the view of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), who took some issue with the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy), the promoter of the Bill, about whether this phenomenon is growing or declining. The Department's figures show that, overall, in the last reporting period, which is April 2001 to March 2002, the number of reported incidents of disruptive passenger behaviour fell by 15 per cent. compared with the previous year. As the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw rightly said, however, some of that may be accounted for by the decrease in passenger numbers following 11 September 2001, most notably in transatlantic air traffic—regrettably, as my husband's business is in that sector.

Desmond Swayne: Is my hon. Friend aware of the then Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions consultation document, "The Future of Aviation", of December 2000, which says that air rage
	"is not as widespread a problem as media reports would sometimes suggest."
	She says that, subsequently, it has declined. Is she telling me that it is even less of a problem that it was in 2000?

Anne McIntosh: The figures speak for themselves, but, clearly, it is a matter for debate. Right hon. and hon. Members may draw different conclusions, but my hon. Friend is right to refer to the most recent consultation document. Although, in part, the 15 per cent. decline in the last reporting period follows a decrease in passenger numbers post 11 September, the decrease in reported incidents since September was much greater than the fall in passenger numbers. The pattern of incidents reported was very similar to the corresponding data in the previous year. Such significant differences are not identified in the notes of the Department. According to the Department, the figures confirm that air rage
	"is not a widespread phenomenon, and the probability of any individual passenger being affected by an incident of disruptive behaviour is extremely low."
	That shows that the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth was extremely unfortunate in her experience in the early 1990s. I sympathise with her, as all of us would admit to some fear of flying: I admit to being an anxious flyer. As she said, if one is in a confined space, there is no safe zone to which to go.
	The Department says, however, that
	"there remains a low level of anti-social behaviour, which on occasion escalates into serious incidents which could pose a threat to the safety of the aircraft and/or its occupants."
	The Department is conscious that airline employees working on board aircraft are more at risk of harm than the average passenger by virtue of the fact that they are flying more frequently and, because of the nature of their responsibilities, more exposed to disruptive passengers.
	I think that it is important to share the figures with the House, particularly in view of the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) provided figures for smoking and for alcohol-related disruption. In the last reporting year, of the 1,055 incidents reported, the CAA categorised 50 per cent.—528—as significant. A further 52 cases—only 5 per cent.—were judged to be serious.

Eric Forth: I am familiar with the figures, but it is helpful for the House to hear them. However, do we have any idea what the categories of "significant" and "serious" mean? The definitions can be arbitrary. As we have learned from the example of smoking, I do not think that anyone would argue that finding someone smoking in the lavatory on an aircraft—however serious an offence it may be—is the sort of thing that should be subject to an arrest. Can my hon. Friend help us and tell us whether there is any description of what the terms mean?

Anne McIntosh: My right hon. Friend touches on a personal point that I hope to cover when I discuss the Bill's wording. I am delighted to see the Under-Secretary of State for Transport in his place, and we shall seek his assistance. As my right hon. Friend suggested, clause 1(2) refers to "specified behaviour", and it would be helpful if it clarified whether an incident was "serious" or "significant".
	The Under-Secretary, the Minister for Transport and I have the pleasure of each other's company in the Committee stage of the Railways and Transport Safety Bill. Like me, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst appears to have noticed that part 5 of that Bill relates to "Aviation: Alcohol and Drugs". Clause 89 is about the crew "Being unfit for duty", and prescribed limits are set in clause 90. Clause 91 defines "Aviation functions", and it will come as no surprise to the Under-Secretary that I am seeking to write new provisions into that Bill.

Desmond Swayne: Will my hon. Friend consider whether that is necessary? She has said that the incidence of air rage has declined since the DETR document was published in December 2002. Paragraph 101 of that publication says:
	"There is already a considerable body of legislation, both criminal and aviation-specific, to deal with offenders."

Anne McIntosh: That is, indeed, the case.
	To satisfy the question of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst about the fact that the Bill does not deal with a potentially disruptive passenger boarding an aircraft in a drunken state, I thought that it would be helpful to refer to the Air Navigation Order 2000. It was made under the Civil Aviation Act 1982, which was passed under the Conservative Administration. The order covers aviation safety and article 65 makes it an offence—I do not believe that it has been amended, but the Under-Secretary might confirm this—to enter an aircraft when drunk, to be drunk on an aircraft and to endanger the safety of an aircraft or any person therein. I hope that that satisfies my right hon. Friend.

Eric Forth: My hon. Friend might know that I am not that easily satisfied. I am not sure whether the provisions that she has described would meet the problem that the Bill's promoter and I have described. How does that solve the problem of people presenting themselves at the door of an aircraft in a foreign port having gone through all the formalities? Can we deal adequately with such people by not allowing them admittance to the aircraft?

Anne McIntosh: Nothing in existing law or the Bill would deal adequately with that problem. Indeed, the Government do not believe that the Bill would rectify it. That is why a noble Friend of the Under-Secretary is on the record as saying in another place that the Government will look to the International Civil Aviation Organisation to deal with the gap in the law.
	It would be more appropriate for the Government to take the opportunity to include such provisions in the Railways and Transport Safety Bill, although that would, of course, deprive the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw of successfully promoting his Bill. I regret that that has not happened and expect the Under-Secretary to explain why. The House and Parliament in general are accused of over-legislating. Why do we need two Bills when one would do?
	The House will be interested to know that 77 per cent. of all incidents involve male passengers, which is perhaps not unsurprising. The figure has remained almost constant over the past three years. I also learn from the Department for Transport's note that the majority of offenders were in their 20s, 30s and 40s, so happily my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst is exonerated.

Desmond Swayne: On the gender of the offenders, how does that marry up with the overall proportion of air travellers? Are they preponderantly male, or is it half and half?

Anne McIntosh: I am not sure that the Department's note covers that, and I look to the Under-Secretary for assistance having been accused in Committee earlier this week of answering the Government's questions for them. Hopefully, he will have the answer.
	A third of incidents involved people who travelled alone. Worthy of specific mention is that 21 incidents involved groups of 10 or more. Some 5 per cent. of incidents occurred in business or first class. In the last reported period, alcohol and tobacco were the two main contributory factors to disruptive behaviour. As a non-smoker, I have more sympathy with those who turn to alcohol in times of anxiety either before boarding or while on board an aircraft than I do with those who turn to smoking, which is a separate offence.
	Alcohol was identified as, or suspected of being, a contributory cause in 45 per cent.—almost half—of all incidents. That was an increase from 43 per cent. in the previous reporting period. Around 40 per cent. of alcohol-related incidents involved passengers drinking their own alcohol, which was also the case in the previous reporting period. So why is the Bill silent on prohibiting passengers from boarding a flight with their own alcohol? Regrettably, we have lost duty free travel throughout the European Union because the Danish Government blocked its continuation. I understand that people who purchase alcohol are not allowed to drink it during the flight. I was therefore surprised to find that 40 per cent. of alcohol-related incidents involve passengers drinking their own alcohol, and that there is no provision in the Bill to prevent passengers carrying their own alcohol on to the plane. We expect the Under-Secretary to explain why, when his Department has identified that as a rising problem, the Bill does not deal with it. The figures up to March 2002 show that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst so eloquently spelled out, drinking prior to boarding has a knock-on effect on behaviour on the aircraft.
	Smoking, or the desire to smoke, featured in 385 incidents, or 36 per cent. of the total, compared with 33 per cent. in the previous reporting period up to March 2001, so there has been a rise. A staggering 79 per cent. of those incidents involved smoking in the toilet. That offence, I am told by the Department, implies a degree of premeditated deception which poses greater safety risks to the aircraft. That invites the question why the Bill, albeit only five clauses long, does not extend to imposing higher penalties on those who commit such a serious, premeditated offence as smoking in the toilet, which, I have to say, is the most disgusting thing that I can think of.

Desmond Swayne: Will my hon. Friend admit that while that may be disgusting, it is a lot less disgusting than an air rage incident?

Anne McIntosh: If time permits, I would like to share some rather horrendous air rage offences with right hon. and hon. Members.
	The number of recorded incidents must be seen in the context of the number of flights operated by UK carriers and the number of passengers carried. It may help the House if I record that during the 12 months to the end of March 2002 UK airlines operated about 1.1 million passenger flights and carried 104 million passengers. The figures are similar to those for the previous year. As I said, in the year up to March 2002, only 52 serious incidents were reported, why have the Government seen fit to draft a separate Bill rather than including these clauses in the Railways and Transport Safety Bill. I do not make light of air rage. It is, I accept, a terrifying experience being cooped up with drunk or disruptive passengers or with someone who is going berserk because they would appear to need a cigarette in the middle of a flight.
	I turn briefly to the International Civil Aviation Organisation's role in the matter. ICAO's member states are required to have regulations for the prevention of alcohol and drug abuse by aviation personnel. In its document A33-12, which is short but worthy of note, ICAO is currently considering harmonising member states' alcohol and drug-testing programmes. It directs
	"the Council to review existing guidance for improvements aimed at helping States to develop consistent prevention and testing programmes."
	I hope that the Under-Secretary will have the opportunity to tell us what stage ICAO has reached.
	In document A33-4, ICAO calls for the adoption of
	"national legislation on certain offences committed on board civil aircraft".
	The appendix to that document reveals that ICAO is considering offences such as assault and other acts of interference against a crew member, other acts endangering safety or jeopardising good order and discipline, and questions of jurisdiction.

Eric Forth: I had hoped that my hon. Friend would touch on that. We are in that part of her analysis that deals with the international aspects and the ICAO, but has it become seized of the problem of misbehaviour before boarding the aircraft—the Bill's promoter described that so eloquently—which usually involves drunkenness, but may involve other things? I would have thought that we must look to the international body to begin to take effective action on such people who seek to board an aircraft. A UK-registered aircraft is subject to UK law, so we could deal with it when it landed in the UK, but we are considering what happens in a foreign airport before the aircraft takes off. Does the ICAO have proposals on the stocks? Is it considering that problem?

Anne McIntosh: I am delighted to say that Lord Whitty pressed for international action to ensure that crimes committed on board aircraft are prosecuted appropriately in all states. I hope that we hear that that provision is to be extended to preventing offenders from boarding aircraft in an unfit state. We learned this from Lord Whitty in the January 1999 debate:
	"The . . . problem relates to offences committed abroad which are pursued abroad and prosecuted in foreign courts."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 January 1999; Vol. 596, c. 155.]
	That point is slightly different from the one that my right hon. Friend raises. I hope that the Minister takes note of his question and replies to the point. While the ICAO is aware of the question of jurisdiction, the point is slightly different in that regard.
	I note for my right hon. Friend's benefit that in the early years of civil aviation the main international concern was the problem of gaps in jurisdiction over offences committed aboard aircraft. There is a distinction in that common law countries, on the whole, claimed territorial jurisdiction only and did not always consider their aircraft to be part of their territory. Civil law countries, on the other hand, claimed jurisdiction over offences committed by their own nationals abroad, to a greater or lesser extent.
	Some states might grant extradition only if their national law allowed, but they were under no international obligation to do so. Many states refused to extradite their own nationals, and most refused that for political offences. My right hon. Friend referred to the 1963 Tokyo convention on offences and certain other acts committed on board aircraft, which is concerned with establishing jurisdiction over offences committed on board aircraft and the extradition of offenders. It is important to draw it to the Minister's attention that there is a gap in law, which, I note with some disappointment, the Bill fails to address. However, there is still time to amend the Bill being considered in Committee, and I shall seek to do that.
	On a point of information, the Tokyo convention was enacted in UK law by the Tokyo Convention Act 1967, which was replaced by parts of the Civil Aviation Act 1982, section 92(1) of which applies criminal law to aircraft. Section 94(1), (2) and (3) implement article 6 of the convention, which provides the commander of an aircraft with the power to impose reasonable measures on a passenger to protect the safety of the aircraft. That is the scenario that my hon. and right hon. Friends referred to during this excellent debate.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst will be interested to know that the European Commission published a communication on the protection of air passengers in the European Union. It was considered by the European Parliament, where he served with great distinction for a number of years, early in 2001. The European Parliament considered whether there was a need for more and broader legislation to combat air rage.
	What is air rage and how is it described? We are probably hampered by the fact that we do not have an adequate definition of air rage. One might have looked to this Bill to define air rage, but I am disappointed to find that it provides no assistance in that regard. I thought that it would be helpful therefore to look at how air rage has been dealt with by other jurisdictions.

Eric Forth: My hon. Friend is touching on the phrase "specified behaviour" which is the only term that appears in the Bill. Perhaps she is about to suggest—it might be a good idea—that when the Bill is considered in Committee some of the wording that she has found might be suitable for inclusion, perhaps in a schedule, to help those who, in difficult circumstances, seek to interpret that term, the better to exercise the powers that they have been given under the Bill. Will she consider that when she gives us these helpful examples?

Anne McIntosh: That is a helpful suggestion. Unfortunately, the Library has given me the German law in the original language, so I shall have to look further into that. I have only a conversational knowledge of German, so I shall refer to other jurisdictions.
	I know that my right hon. Friend is a great admirer of all things American, particularly the American legal system, so I shall start with the Federal Aviation Administration which is the responsible authority in the United States and issues operations bulletins to air carriers. Its most recent air carrier operations bulletin, No. 1-94-1 on service of alcoholic beverages, states:
	"The boarding of a passenger who appears to be intoxicated is a violation of . . . the Federal Aviation Regulations."
	Having drawn that provision to the Government's attention, one has to ask why it has not been included in the Bill. As my right hon. Friend has suggested, it would fit neatly into clause 1, which amends paragraph 11 of schedule 1A to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, inserting paragraph 11A which would prohibit "specified behaviour".
	US federal aviation regulations also require operators to report passenger disturbances associated with alcohol within five days. That highlights another gap in the Bill. Should an offending passenger fail to be arrested because a police officer has not arrived in time or because other passengers on the flight are too nervous and frightened of a particularly aggressive or disruptive passenger, is there a time frame within which the offence cannot be prosecuted because the offending person has not been arrested?
	The Federal Aviation Administration bulletin states:
	"interference with a crew member"—
	which is an offence under its regulations
	"may also be a criminal violation under... the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, as amended."
	I commend this document to the attention of the Under-Secretary of State and will be happy to pass it to him after the debate.

Desmond Swayne: What is wrong with the formulation that was used in the amendment to the Air Navigation (No. 2) Order 1995,
	"acting in a disruptive manner",
	which covers the use of threatening or abusive language to a crew member, behaving in a threatening or abusive manner to a crew member and interfering with a crew member in the performance of his or her duties? I thought that the Bill sought simply to bump up the penalty for that to five years so that it would become an arrestable offence. [Interruption.] I see from the Minister's body language that I have misunderstood.

Anne McIntosh: That seemed like the start of a helpful suggestion. Perhaps the Minister will put us right.
	Under the German law on air rage offences, there are two main provisions pertinent to what is called the unruly behaviour of passengers on a German aircraft. Most of the offences committed as a consequence of drunkenness, such as insult or assault, are covered by the respective articles of the German criminal code. According to article 315, it is an offence seriously to endanger an aircraft, for example by destroying equipment. One hesitates to think what equipment might be destroyed. Alcohol is not specifically mentioned and where passengers are concerned the consumption of alcohol is not an offence in itself.
	Article 29, paragraph 3, of the German air traffic law holds the captain responsible for security on board and authorises him to take any necessary measures. Under the ICAO and US and German law, and, I believe, our own law, which applies across the kingdom, the captain is responsible and authorised to take any necessary measures. Although not explicitly stated, it is understood that that might include preventing a passenger from drinking alcohol. If there is a German law in that regard, it is right that we in Britain should seek to introduce one, particularly in regard to a passenger who is already a little the worse for alcohol. Certainly, such passengers should be prevented from taking their own alcohol on the plane.
	However, both provisions applying in Germany are restricted to cases where danger is concrete. A specific law concerning unruly passengers is being drafted. As I mentioned, regrettably, the German law is available only in German, but before Committee stage I shall endeavour to obtain clarification.
	As I am half Danish and have family in Denmark I am particularly interested in the Danish situation, and the Danish Air Navigation Act is available on the internet. While there is nothing in the Act about passengers being drunk, chapter 5 contains provisions for the breath testing of crew suspected of drinking, which may be of interest in the context of the Railways and Transport Safety Bill. Why, if we are introducing prescribed limits for aviation crew—flight crew and attendants—can the Minister not extend the provisions of that Bill to passengers? There should be some mechanism for preventing passengers already a little worse for wear from boarding a plane.
	Chapter 5 of the Danish Act repeats that the pilot in command has supreme authority on board, and goes on to state in article 44(2) that when necessary in the interest of aircraft safety or protection of passengers or goods on board, crew members and passengers may, without being asked by the pilot in command, implement preventive measures, including the use of force, to the extent that it can be justified in the circumstances.
	Article 45 goes on to say that if a serious offence is committed on board an aircraft, the pilot in command shall, to clear up the matter, take all necessary measures that cannot be postponed without being detrimental—presumably to the flight.
	I should like to refer to three recent court cases illustrating the legal implications of air rage. The judgment pronounced in the case of Regina v. Julian Ayodeji on 31 August 2000 held that a sentence of eight months' imprisonment was appropriate. The defendant was a 32-year-old male—another male, Madam Deputy Speaker—who pleaded guilty to a charge of being drunk on an aircraft, contrary to article 57(1) of the Air Navigation (No. 2) Order 1995. The judge was entitled to consider the fact that fellow passengers must have been utterly terrified. The verdict did not mean that he had been sentenced on the basis of the more serious offence of endangering an aircraft.

Desmond Swayne: Will my hon. Friend comment on the case that will not now come to court—that of Courtney Love? The offence to which I have already referred is on the statute book. If cases are not prosecuted and no action is taken, an incentive is created. The proper remedy is to take the action, rather than put new offences on to the statute book.

Anne McIntosh: If time permits, I hope to turn to a number of cases reported in the press. My hon. Friend raises a crucial point. I am sure that the House will agree—I certainly hope that the Under-Secretary will do so—that there should be one rule for all passengers, regardless of whether they are celebrities. Hon. Members fall into the category of celebrities and I believe that we should be exemplary in our behaviour on aircraft, regardless of whether we are nervous flyers. The law should not recognise whether the passenger in question happens to be well known and should be applied irrespective of such considerations—a point to which I shall return in a moment.
	Secondly, in the case of Regina v. David James McCallum, which was judged on 5 October 2001, a sentence of 12 months' imprisonment for affray was deemed not manifestly excessive where the appellant had sustained abusive conduct on an airplane for a considerable period. Thirdly, in the case of Regina v. Heather Susan Tagg, it was judged on 30 April 2001 that there were clearly vires in section 60(3)(h) of the Civil Aviation Act 1982 to prohibit drunkenness in an aircraft—as in article 57 of the Air Navigation (No. 2) Order 1995, Statutory Instrument No. 1995/1970— because drunkenness on an aircraft was one sort of conduct capable of bearing on the safety of the aircraft and the people therein. In my view, those sentences could have been tougher in view of the gravity of the offence.
	I promised briefly to mention for the satisfaction of my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West some rather disgusting examples of air rage. Mr. Finneran, a banker, was recently fined $50,000 by United Airlines after he assaulted an attendant and then, regrettably, defecated on a first-class food cart on a flight from Buenos Aires to New York. I hope that that is not something that the House would condone. I shall not refer to the next case in my notes, as it is rather vulgar. On another occasion, a passenger named Mr. Misiak put his hands around the throat of a flight attendant and threatened her because she had spilt a drink on him.
	Another passenger, a Miss Pennix, grabbed a flight attendant's finger and bent it backwards. Miss Pennix explained to the authorities that she had not liked the way in which the flight attendant had told her to put her tray and seat in an upright position before landing. As a result of cases such as those, airline crews have begun to take drastic measures, which sometimes have disastrous consequences.

Desmond Swayne: A $50,000 fine seems to be in proportion for a first offence such as the one that my hon. Friend cited. However, she has not told us what the penalties were for the other offences. Were the penalties appropriate? In this Bill, we are considering a five-year sentence.

Anne McIntosh: I am handicapped by the fact that the newspaper report did not give that information, but a maximum five-year sentence would have resolved the situations in the court cases that I referred to. The maximum penalty that was handed down in those cases was two years. I believe that five years is much more appropriate.
	Courtney Love, the widow of Kurt Cobain, is not the only celebrity to have displayed air rage. She was said to have become verbally abusive towards cabin staff and to have gone berserk. In a case that we have already heard about, a Boeing 737, which was flying 148 fans back from Santiago in Spain to Glasgow after a football tie, was diverted to Cardiff after the pilot sent out a mayday. I could use up my remaining time by going through endless reports in the press. However, the case has been made for a more severe penalty.
	Alcohol has been shown to be a contributory cause in 45 per cent. of all incidents of air rage. In 40 per cent. of those cases, the passengers were drinking their own alcohol; and in 42 per cent. of cases, the passengers had been drinking alcohol before boarding. Regrettably, there are omissions from the Bill. I believe that it will have to be either amended or, more appropriately, considered as part of the Railways and Transport Safety Bill.

Desmond Swayne: Although I would a support a ban on passengers consuming their own alcohol, I hope that my hon. Friend is not tempting the Minister to prevent law-abiding people from consuming alcohol on aeroplanes.

Anne McIntosh: Citizens may be law-abiding before the consumption of alcohol.
	I hope to demonstrate why the Bill is lacking. As the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw, the promoter of the Bill, said, on football day excursions people may end up waiting hours before returning home. Many of them—perhaps because they are of a nervous disposition—drink excessive amounts of alcohol. The Bill does not deal with that.
	The Bill is flawed in that it does not deal with the 42 per cent. of passengers involved in such offences who have been drinking alcohol before boarding, or with the 40 per cent. who drink their own alcohol on board the plane. The Bill is also deficient in that it does not explain who would be the authority with the power of arrest. Could the authority be a fellow passenger? Will the Under-Secretary put my mind at rest by assuring me that it does not mean that a passenger will be able to arrest a member of the crew? We wish to give the Bill a fair wind, but we hope that the Under-Secretary will answer our questions.

David Jamieson: The hon. Lady has certainly left me a lot of time in which to respond. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy) on winning a place in the ballot and on the exemplary way in which he opened the debate. I commend him for his long-standing campaign on air rage.
	The Government take seriously the problem of disruptive passenger behaviour on aircraft. It rightly became a matter of increased public concern after a serious incident in 1998 when a stewardess was attacked and injured on board a United Kingdom aircraft. The Government took action in two ways. First, we set up a working group on disruptive passengers, which the Department chaired. It included representatives from the Civil Aviation Authority, the Home Office, the police, airlines and unions. Its remit was to advise Ministers on measures to minimise the frequency and potential impact of disruptive behaviour on board aircraft.
	Secondly, on the group's advice, we introduced a standardised reporting scheme for disruptive behaviour on board United Kingdom aircraft. At the time, little hard evidence was available and it was agreed that statistics were necessary to establish the nature and scale of the problem.
	I am pleased that the statistics that have been gathered to date confirm that air rage is not as widespread as media reports sometimes suggest. However, some antisocial behaviour escalates into serious incidents and thus poses a safety threat to the aircraft and its occupants. In the past reporting year, more than 1,000 incidents were reported on United Kingdom aircraft, of which 52 were classed as serious. Several hon. Members said that the number of incidents was small, but 52 incidents multiplied by the number of people on an aircraft suggest that a large number of people had been put at risk. However, the figure equates to one serious incident for every 2 million passengers. Any incident of antisocial behaviour on board an aircraft, however serious, can be an unpleasant and frightening experience for those affected, as several hon. Members made clear in the debate.
	United Kingdom legislation to deal with offences on board aircraft is among the most comprehensive in the world. Several specific offences relate to behaviour on aircraft: endangering the safety of an aircraft; being drunk in an aircraft; smoking when that is prohibited; disobeying a lawful command by the commander of an aircraft; and acting in a disruptive manner.
	Normal criminal law applies on board United Kingdom aircraft and powers also exist for acting against offenders on board non-UK airlines whose next destination is the UK, provided that the act is an offence under both UK law and the law of the state where the aircraft is registered.
	However, it is essential that offences can be properly enforced and that penalties are appropriate. In the case of the offence of endangering the safety of an aircraft, there is consensus that the maximum two-year sentence is not proportionate to the gravity of the offence. In at least one case, a judge commented that if he had been able to pass a longer sentence, he would have done so.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw said, the police have been worried that their powers are not always sufficient with regard to some of the offences. I confirm that that sometimes prevents them from taking effective action. Clause 1 deals with that. The police have asked for their powers to be strengthened to allow other offences to become arrestable by statute but without increasing the penalty.
	As my hon. Friend made clear, all those who work in the airline industry support the changes and our working group on disruptive passengers also welcomed them. The Government want the offences to be prosecuted effectively and to ensure that offenders are punished appropriately, thereby sending a strong message that such behaviour is unacceptable. The Bill will help to achieve those aims. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for promoting the Bill and happy to record the Government's support for it.

Desmond Swayne: I came here to oppose the Bill but the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy) has persuaded me of the need for it.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 63 (Committal of Bills).

David Wilshire: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am not clear what the situation now is. We have less than a minute in which to try to dispose of further business and I wonder whether there are any provisions in Standing Orders which say that, when we are this close, it would be unwise to start a new debate.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I will adhere to Standing Orders and continue with the business that is before the House.

Remaining Private Members' Bills
	 — 
	DEALING IN CULTURAL OBJECTS (OFFENCES) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.
	Second Reading deferred till Friday 4 April.

HEALTH AND SAFETY AT WORK (OFFENCES) BILL

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [31 January], That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Hon. Members: Object.
	Debate to be resumed on Friday 7 March.

CROWN EMPLOYMENT (NATIONALITY) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.
	Second Reading deferred till Friday 28 February.

PUBLIC HIGHWAYS

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Woolas.]

Bob Russell: Dick Turpin was an infamous villain of the 18th century, a ruthless highwayman and a nasty piece of work. For a time, he operated in Essex—at the London end of the county, I hasten to add. Today, I am going to tell the House a modern story of highway robbery, the value of which is considerably greater to the perpetrator, if he is allowed to get away with it, than the combined proceeds that Dick Turpin accumulated in a lifetime of crime. If this 21st century highway robbery is allowed to happen, the national precedent that it will set should sound alarm bells for all Members who represent urban constituencies that contain backland sites similar to those in my Colchester constituency. I am sure that the Minister can think of such an example in Plymouth. Nobody—including planning lawyers, highway experts and others with a wealth of experience in development matters—to whom I have related this story has ever come across anything like it. They are unanimous in not believing it. Worryingly, the public relations man for a national builder has already asked me to let him know what happens, because his client is interested. I bet he is!
	The highway robbery in this case relates to private property developers appropriating the public highway to develop land, which they would otherwise not be able to do because they cannot satisfy the minimum highway standards where their land joins an established road. They do not have enough land in their ownership to comply with the highway requirements of the site in question, so with the connivance of the local council—which, it has to be said, has woefully failed the local community—they have decided simply to grab a piece of the road outside about a dozen privately owned houses to overcome their problem. Double yellow lines, to make parking illegal, are not an alternative, in either highway or road safety terms, because this is not a method that complies with current highway regulations for new junctions where vision sight lines for drivers have to be secured permanently, and certainly not in the case of an access road serving an estate of between 60 and 110 dwellings. Even if double yellow lines were a solution, the Minister will confirm that the granting of road traffic orders is not in the gift of developers or planners. Therefore such a solution—in this case, one that is totally inadequate and inappropriate—should not even be considered when contemplating granting a planning approval.
	Let me set the scene; it is one that is to be found in many similar locations around the country. The St. George's area of New Town, Colchester, was developed in the early years of the 20th century. High density housing was built alongside roads laid out on a grid system. For about 100 years, the backland behind rows of terraced and semi-detached houses was used for private allotments and later also for lock-up garages. These were accessed by a single track running between the houses in Barrington road. Over the past 20 to 30 years, one developer, Mr. Gordon Parker, has by various means acquired a large amount of the backland plots, many of which had fallen into an unkempt condition. Over time, they had become a wilderness and a dumping ground. Mr. Parker is not your usual property developer. He specialises in assembling parcels of land by reaching the parts to which others choose not to go. The methods by which he achieves this by stealth are something of a mystery. He has even included land owned by the local church. He is not the most popular man in Colchester. Indeed, over the years, his performance in relation to property dealings and developments has made him very unpopular. His past goes before him. Anyway, he managed to assemble enough of the backland to think that he could secure planning consent. But he could not. He was thwarted for years because he simply could not satisfy either the planning regulations or the highway requirements.
	Then a few months ago, for reasons that I need not mention today, all the planning objections were amazingly resolved. Only weeks before, there had been total rejection of the scheme as an appeal loomed. However, there remained the seemingly insurmountable problem of hopelessly inadequate access to serve a new housing estate that could eventually contain 110 residences.
	A cunning plan was then hatched by the developer. It would, of course, be outrageous to suggest that the idea was put forward by someone in either Colchester borough council or Essex County Highways. An easy solution was found, which would not cost the developer a penny in land purchase: grab a chunk of the public road, narrow a section of Barrington road to a single width, widen the pavement in front of half a dozen houses either side of the track so that the vision line for drivers entering and leaving the new estate access road is permanently secured across it, and hey presto, at a stroke, the previously impregnable highway objections are overcome—to which I, and the entire local community, say, "Oh no they aren't!"
	Solving the developers' problem will result in a lasting, extremely serious road safety hazard that cannot possibly comply with the minimum highway standards that the Ministry of Transport must demand. That is why it is so important for what may appear to be a local issue to be drawn to the personal attention of the Minister, in the hope that he and his officials can prevent it from happening here, and to ensure that measures exist to prevent others from using the same procedure elsewhere.
	The House of Commons Library has given me some background information to the Highways Act 1980. Section 75, which deals with the variation of widths of carriageways and footpaths, was never intended to be used in the manner proposed here. The purpose of the Act was to enable highway authorities to approve works that would benefit the community. In this case the benefit is not to the community, but to a private property developer.
	The Act makes it clear that a highway is there to enable vehicles to pass and re-pass. Specifically, section 130 places the highway authority under a duty—I repeat, a duty—to assert the rights of the public to pass and re-pass. That right, in terms of commonsense daily use, will be removed if the road is narrowed to a single carriageway. Two-way traffic will have to compete for use of the same single-track stretch of road, over a distance that I estimate to be perhaps twice the length of the Chamber, into which the new junction—serving 59 dwellings to start with, and perhaps another 50 if the rest of the site is developed in due course—will emerge.
	This is a recipe for disaster. Far from this cunning highway arrangement being a boost to road safety, the consequence will be the creation of serious road safety issues in the immediate vicinity. I emphasise that there are two schools respectively 100 yd and 50 yd on each side of the new junction that the developer wants to create. They are St George's infant school and St George's junior school; the latter celebrates its centenary in two months.
	We all know of the serious congestion and road safety problems that already exist outside schools. To make them dangerously worse, as this scheme will, is an outrage. Traffic calming measures had to be introduced because of the number of accidents causing injury that were occurring. Once the area has been made safer, why introduce new dangers?
	Two-way traffic will have to manoeuvre through a single-width carriageway in Barrington road, with a new junction generating traffic entering and leaving the new estate. To add to the safety dangers, the single-width section of Barrington road at its northern end will meet an existing T-junction with two-way traffic entering and leaving it. Traffic turning right out of the T-junction to go south along Barrington road, towards St George's infant school, will be able to do so only by being on the wrong side of the road.
	Alongside the T-junction is the corner of the junior school playground, with gates for pupils only yards away. It is already a dangerous corner; the new single-width carriageway carrying two-way traffic will make it even more dangerous.
	If the Minister or his officials will accept my invitation to visit the setting for this crazy proposal—it is worse than crazy: a coroner could construe it as corporately or criminally negligent, in terms of those who designed and approved it—I have every confidence that there is no way it will receive Department for Transport approval. Nor would the Government be prepared to see it repeated throughout the country. It is because of my concern about the national precedent that this scheme would unleash that I urge the Minister to do everything in his power to prevent it.
	I am grateful that the Minister responding to this debate has responsibility for road safety issues. There is still time to prevent what the local council has sanctioned, because the highway conditions of the planning approval have yet to be finalised. In truth, the proposed junction layout must be rejected, and the developer will have to find more traditional methods to secure an access into his land: by exclusively using land to which he has legal ownership, not by grabbing part of the public highway.
	The local community—strongly represented by the St George's residents association, the congregation of the nearby St Stephen's church, borough councillors for New Town ward, Colchester civic society, and the parents, staff, governors and pupils of St George's infant and junior schools—would be delighted if the Minister promised to veto the proposed junction arrangements, which are in breach of highways legislation, and of his Department's regulations and requirements for minimum standards. If he cannot go that far today, we would welcome a full public inquiry into whether the appropriation of the public highway by a private developer should be allowed. The national precedent involved means that we cannot allow this scheme to proceed unchallenged.
	Another consequence of this scheme will be the loss of about 25 on-street parking places—on either side of Barrington road, where the plan is to narrow it to a single carriageway—in a neighbourhood where parking is already at a premium. This will add to the traffic, parking and road safety problems. One of those who will be seriously affected is a disabled man, who will no longer be able to get a car to his front door. Every vehicle delivering to the street, be it the refuse freighter or the milk float, will also experience problems. They will be unable to stop at houses along the single-carriageway stretch, which will be about 75 yd long.
	I recognise that the root cause of the problem does not come within the remit of the Minister's Department; local government planning decisions are for another arm of government. The manner in which this application was handled leaves a lot to be desired, to put it mildly. Such misgivings may well be pursued elsewhere. There is much that I would like to say about how the planning process was contaminated in determining this application. In more than 30 years of elected public office in Colchester, I have never before seen such arm-twisting by officers, which has led to a majority of councillors on the planning committee performing an undignified somersault. That issue falls outside the terms of my debate and of the Minister's remit, but roads are totally within the Department for Transport's jurisdiction. That is why the Minister who is replying is from the Department for Transport, and not from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
	Even with the support of officers who should know better, and of councillors coerced into changing their minds, no developer has the power to appropriate a public highway to the detriment of those whose freeholds front it, in order to enable the building of a new housing estate. The Minister will be aware that when a developer wishes to develop a site—for housing or whatever—for which he does not have the necessary land to create a safe junction that complies with highway regulations, he has to acquire the land that he needs. In such instances, the land is referred to as a ransom strip. Its size is not important—what is important is how its acquisition will enable a development to proceed that otherwise could not. The value of a ransom strip can range from a third of the value of the land to be developed, up to even half in some circumstances.
	The value of the area of public highway in Barrington road that Mr. Parker and his fellow developers have their sights on appropriating in reality, though not through legal ownership—and without paying a penny for it—ranges from a minimum of £600,000 to more than £1 million. The figures, the second of which is probably the more accurate, are arrived at by using the ransom strip formula. For easy maths, let us assume that the value of a building plot in this part of Colchester is £30,000, and that one third is thus valued at £10,000. If we multiply that by the approximate 60 residential units on the site, the value of the appropriated public highway is a minimum of £600,000. This valuation is at the lower level. If we now add in the potential near doubling of the estate in due course, the value of the highway land to the developers is in excess of £1 million. Yet the developers have got it all for nothing!
	Essex county council's web page on the general subject of the ownership of highway land states:
	"Although the area of land forms part of the publicly maintainable highway it is very often not actually owned by the County Council. In the case of an established property (ie prewar) there is a common law presumption that the land will revert back to the abutting land owners should highway rights be removed."
	The area of public highway that the developers intend taking away from the public—a road over which vehicular traffic has travelled for the past 100 years—is outside 12 privately owned homes. It is not outside land or property owned by the developers; thus they have no legal right to either the surface or the soil of the highway. In law, the soil beneath the highway is owned by the frontagers, not those who own land round the back.
	I am advised by a leading authority on planning law that Mr. Parker, and those who have joined him in his quest for development, cannot remove the rights of Her Majesty's subjects to drive their vehicles along the Queen's highway, and the planning authority has no power to withdraw the public highway rights enjoyed both by frontagers and road users in order to facilitate the proposed development. To do so would be against section 130 of the Highways Act 1980, and perhaps other sections of the same Act and other Acts of Parliament. I am not a lawyer, but lawyers tell me that that is the case.
	I hope that the Minister can confirm that. Failing that, will he give an undertaking that he will have the legal position investigated? If not, what is there to stop any developer taking it upon himself to decide to appropriate any part of the highway in situations such as I have described? An easily swayed local authority will not stop them.
	It is claimed by the council that the section of Barrington road in question will still be a highway, albeit one that cannot carry vehicular traffic, so there is no need to apply for a road closure order or stopping-up order, as set out in section 247 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The legal advice that I have been given says that is somewhat disingenuous of the local authority. I hope that the Minister agrees with that legal opinion, and that he will confirm that local residents must be given the legal right to object to the loss of the public highway in front of their homes.
	Section 247 states that notice of the making of an order must be published in a local paper, and that notices must be displayed at the ends of the highway that is intended to be stopped up. None of that happened. The council will, in effect, be ignoring the spirit of the Act, because it is claimed that the highway will not be stopped up, even though it will be physically impossible to drive vehicles along the area of blocked-up highway.
	I understand that a stopping-up order has to be confirmed by the Department of Transport. If an order was sought, legal objections could of course be made and a public inquiry might result. Anybody with an ounce of common sense who viewed this disgraceful state of affairs would have no hesitation in finding in favour of the residents—hence the twists and turns of the local authority to prevent its handiwork being put to public examination.
	The council, in league with a property developer, is denying residents natural justice, if not their legal rights. It not only aims to deprive residents of the road in front of their homes, but it is misusing the law—at any rate, in spirit—so that its dastardly deed cannot be challenged. Or can it? After today's debate, I hope that it can.
	If there is a loophole, it needs to be blocked. It is clear that we cannot rely on the planning and local highway authorities. The interests of the local community, especially those whose homes front that Alice in Wonderland road arrangement, have been ignored. Worse than that, of course, is the stark realisation that, every day, hundreds of children attending the two nearby schools will be put in danger.
	People whose homes front the area of public highway that a private developer intends taking from them are flabbergasted that such a proposal could even have been considered by the local council, let alone approved. The wider local community looks to the Minister with responsibilities for road safety to prevent a serious road safety threat from becoming a reality. Nationally, I hope that the Government will prevent this case from becoming a precedent for other private developers to appropriate sections of the public highway.
	The proposed configuration of the overall road layout does not appear to comply with national guidelines relating to road junctions. That being so, how can a local highway authority ride roughshod over them? In such circumstances, surely it is the role of central Government to insist that national standards are upheld.

David Jamieson: I congratulate the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) on securing the debate and on raising a matter that is of great importance to his constituents in Barrington road. As he rightly points out, road safety is among my responsibilities. If he was in the Chamber earlier, he will have noticed that I have other responsibilities, too.
	The hon. Gentleman said that the case that he described was highway robbery. Had that been so, I can assure him that a legal remedy would already have been taken.
	In the brief time that remains, it may be helpful if I highlight the law on these matters to show where the responsibility of the various bodies lies. An essential characteristic of a highway is that it is open to all members of the public, although it may not be open to all classes of traffic. An urban highway will usually comprise both the vehicular carriageway used by traffic and the footway. The carriageway and footway together form the highway. Part V of the Highways Act 1980 confers on highway authorities general and specific powers for improving highways, so a highway authority can undertake improvements in the highway boundary without the need for further authorisation. Changes in a highway's layout do not change its legal status as a public highway.
	Of course people like to park their cars in front of their houses, but, sadly, there is no absolute right to do so. In older urban areas with terraced housing and little or no front garden, there is no scope for parking vehicles off the road. Of course such areas were never designed with the car in mind. Although I have not seen the site to which the hon. Gentleman refers, I have seen the maps and it looks as though it is one of those areas. Parking problems in such areas have to be dealt with on a day-to-day basis by the local authorities responsible for traffic management and parking.
	Parliament has given local authorities powers to deal with those problems. As democratically accountable bodies, it is up to local authorities to decide how to use those powers to best advantage in their areas. The Government cannot and should not get involved in those detailed local issues. If we did so, the hon. Gentleman and his party might have something to say about that, as the Liberal Democrats say that they believe very much in devolving power to local government.
	One driver of the need for changing existing highways is, of course, new development. New developments will inevitably generate additional traffic. It is essential that local planning authorities consider the impact of additional traffic on the existing highway network and identify possible needs for improvement. Where such a need is identified, the normal recourse is to seek a contribution from the developer to the costs of any improvements.
	Developing a site may require formation or alteration of junctions to provide access. Visibility is, of course, an important safety consideration at junctions. All road users must have adequate visibility in each direction at junctions to see conflicting traffic movements in sufficient time, enabling them to make their manoeuvres safely.
	The issue raised by the hon. Gentleman involves the formation of a new access to a housing development in his constituency. Subject to the final approval of the planning authority, it will result in the development of about one hectare of land that, as he said, has long been derelict. In principle, the proposed development sits four square with the Government's housing policy, as set out in planning policy guidance note 3. The hon. Gentleman is nodding in approval.
	We want priority to be given to re-using brownfield sites in urban areas, bringing empty homes back into use and converting existing buildings, in preference to developing greenfield sites. We expect land for new housing to be used more efficiently through higher densities, and development to be focused where it is supported by good transport networks and services.
	In this case, the proposal is to build 59 dwellings on about one hectare of land, which forms about half of a larger area of land to the rear of Bourne, Canterbury and Barrington roads in Colchester. The development would comprise two, three and four-bedroomed flats and maisonettes. The site is designated for residential development in both the adopted Colchester borough local plan and second deposit draft of the emerging replacement plan. The streets adjacent to the site comprise mainly Victorian and Edwardian terraced and semi-terraced houses, with the majority having no garaging or provision for off-road parking.
	I understand that the only practicable access to the site that has been identified is off the eastern side of Barrington road. The developer has acquired the necessary strip of land between 26 and 28 Barrington road to enable the access to Barrington road to be formed. As I have said, visibility at junctions is an important safety consideration. Ensuring that visibility is adequate is the responsibility of Essex county council—the local highway authority. It and the planning authority, Colchester borough council, have been in liaison on this issue. It has been concluded that the visibility splays required by the highway authority would be secured and protected either by an extension of the adjacent footway or other physical obstruction. A possible alternative may simply be to impose parking restrictions either side of the junction.
	I am aware that the hon. Gentleman has written a number of letters to Ministers urging intervention in this local planning matter. I know that his particular concern is about what he terms the appropriation of the highway in front of houses in Barrington road to create the visibility splays at the site access. He is also aggrieved at Colchester borough council's handling of the planning application. He has articulated those points strongly. In response to his representations, Colchester borough council was directed not to grant planning consent until the Deputy Prime Minister had decided whether the application was one that he should call in for his own determination, after a public inquiry. However, it was concluded that the application did not raise any land use planning issues that justified its being called in, and on 11 December last year the Government office for the east of England advised the borough council that it was free to determine the application as it saw fit.
	The council is minded to approve the application, but I am told planning permission has not yet been granted because a legal agreement or planning obligation under section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, between the council and the applicant, has not yet been finalised. The agreement will secure, among other things, rights of vehicular access to rear gardens for properties in Barrington road. The planning permission will also be subject to a number of conditions. One of the proposed planning conditions deals specifically with the issue of provision of adequate visibility splays between the new access road and Barrington road. It requires a detailed scheme to be submitted to the local planning authority for approval showing how the 33 x 2.4 m visibility splays at the Barrington road access will be kept clear at all times. The scheme must be completed prior to occupation of any house built on the site.
	In earlier contacts with the hon. Gentleman, it was thought by the Government office for the east of England that the works required to enable the development of the site to go ahead might necessitate a stopping-up order under section 247 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Such orders are made by the Secretary of State for Transport. What is meant by a stopping-up order is an order authorising the removal of all highway rights. The hon. Gentleman was advised that if such an order were required, there would first be an opportunity for local residents to object, and if objections could not be resolved, a public inquiry might be necessary. I explained the procedure to the hon. Gentleman in a written answer on 28 November last year.
	On 24 January, however, Colchester borough council, having taken the advice of its own highway staff and Essex county council, wrote to the hon. Gentleman informing him that as the part of Barrington road affected by the visibility splays will stay as highway, albeit footway instead of carriageway, no road closure or stopping-up order would be necessary. I see no reason to dissent from that view but ultimately it is for local authorities to make sure that they are properly exercising the powers given to them by Parliament. The fact is that the developer will not be appropriating the public highway for his own ends. Barrington road will remain a public highway albeit with possibly some alterations to its overall layout. The requirement to prevent the parking of vehicles in the vicinity of the junction in order to meet visibility requirements has been laid down by the highway authority, Essex county council.
	The detail of how the requirement is to be met is still to be resolved. I would expect the two councils to consider the effect of the scheme on the ease of movement of traffic and the access to the school and residential properties south of the junction. Under section 122 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, a traffic authority is under a duty to secure the expeditious, convenient and safe movement of vehicular and other traffic.
	I acknowledge that parking restrictions or a build-out of the footway may create parking problems for nearby residents of Barrington road, but this is a matter of the detailed design of a scheme. It is for Colchester borough council and Essex county council, together with the developer, to sort out rather than the Government. One hopes that, as democratically accountable bodies, the councils will have regard to the views of local residents. The residents' local councillors will have been able to make representations on their behalf when the council's planning committee considered the planning application.
	Use of a physical build-out to prevent parking on either side of a junction is a tested technique of traffic management. There is nothing new in the issues raised by this case that suggests that there is a gap in the existing law that requires remedy. Legislation, as it stands, provides an adequate framework for resolving what are essentially detailed local planning and highway issues. Sorting them out is exactly why we elect local councils.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at Three o'clock.